"Train left at 4.45," says the porter, looking at his watch. "It's five now."
I had thrown away half an hour keeping watch outside.
I sit down on one of the steps, staring at the floor.
The porter keeps on talking. He must be well aware it was not my sister.
"I said to Fruen there was a gentleman had just rung up. But she only said she hadn't time, and would I give him this letter."
"Was there another lady with her when she left?"
I got up and went out. In the street I opened the letter and read:
"You _must_ not follow me about any more--"
Impassively I put the thing away. It had not surprised me, had made no new impression. Thoroughly womanly, hasty words, written on impulse, with underlining and a dash....
Then it occurred to me to go round to Frøken Elisabeth's address; there was still a glimmer of hope. I heard the door bell ring inside the house as I pressed, and stood listening as in a whirling desert.
Frøken Elisabeth had left an hour before.
Then wine, and then whisky. And then endless whisky. And altogether a twenty-one days' debauch, in the course of which a curtain falls and hides my earthly consciousness. In this state, it enters my head one day to send something to a little cottage in the country. It is a mirror, in a gay gilt frame. And it was for a little maid, by name Olga, a creature touching and sweet to watch as a young calf.
Ay, for I've not got over my neurasthenia yet.
The timber saw is in my room. But I cannot put it together, for the bulk of the wooden parts I left behind at a vicarage in the country. It matters little now, my love for the thing is dulled. My neurasthenic friends, believe me, folk of our sort are useless as human beings, and we should not even do for any kind of beast.
One day I suppose I shall grow tired of this unconsciousness, and go out and live on an island once again.
It looks to be a fine year for berries, yes; whortleberries, crowberries, and fintocks. A man can't live on berries; true enough. But it is good to have them growing all about, and a kindly thing to see. And many a thirsty and hungry man's been glad to find them.
I was thinking of this only yesterday evening.
There's two or three months yet till the late autumn berries are ripe; yes, I know. But there are other joys than berries in the wilds. Spring and summer they are still only in bloom, but there are harebells and ladyslippers, deep, windless woods, and the scent of trees, and stillness. There is a sound as of distant waters from the heavens; never so long-drawn a sound in all eternity. And a thrush may be singing as high as ever its voice can go, and then, just at its highest pitch, the note breaks suddenly at a right angle; clear and clean as if cut with a diamond; then softly and sweetly down the scale once more. Along the shore, too, there is life; guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern are busy there; the wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. But when the sun has set, may come the cry of a loon from some hill-tarn; a melancholy hurrah. That is the last; now there is only the grasshopper left. And there's nothing to say of a grasshopper, you never see it; it doesn't count, only he's there gritting his resiny teeth, as you might say.