"
"Even high spirits?"
She turned her head and looked towards the shore. "Some day perhaps--if
we should come to be friends--I'll tell you more about it."
Peer bent to his oars and rowed on. The stillness of the night drew them
nearer and nearer together, and made them silent; only now and then they
would look at each other and smile.
"What mysterious creature is this I have come upon?" thought Peer. She
might be about one-or two-and-twenty. She sat there with bowed head, and
in this soft glow the oval face had a strange light of dreams upon it.
But suddenly her glance came back and rested on him again, and then she
smiled, and he saw that her mouth was large and her lips full and red.
"I wish I had been all over the world, like you," she said.
"Have you never been abroad, Froken Uthoug?" he asked.
"I spent a winter in Berlin, once, and a few months in South Germany. I
played the violin a little, you see; and I hoped to take it up seriously
abroad and make something of it--but--"
"Well, why shouldn't you?"
She was silent for a little, then at last she said: "I suppose you are
sure to know about it some day, so I may just as well tell you now.
Mother has been out of her mind."
"My dear Froken--"
"And when she's at home my--high spirits are needed to help her to be
more or less herself."
He felt an impulse to rise and go to the girl, and take her head between
his hands. But she looked up, with a melancholy smile; their eyes met in
a long look, and she forgot to withdraw her glance.
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