ite locks; why do you
wear them like that?

Nordan. Oh, well--I have my reasons.

Svava. What are they?

Nordan. We won't go into that now.

Svava. You told me the reason once.

Nordan. Did I?

Svava. I wanted, one day, to take hold of your hair, but you would
not let me. You said: "Do you know why you must not do that?"--"No," I
said.--"Because no one has done that for more than thirty years."--"Who
was it that did it last?" I asked.--"It was a little girl, that you are
very like," you answered.

Nordan. So I told you that, did I?

Svava. "And she was one of your grandmother's younger sisters," you said
to me.

Nordan. She was. It was quite true. And you are like her, my child.

Svava. And then you told me that the year you went to college she was
standing beside you one day and caught up some locks of your hair in her
fingers. "You must never wear your hair shorter than this," she said.
She went away, and you went away; and when, one day, you wrote and asked
her whether you two did not belong to one another, her answer was "yes."
And a month later she was dead.

Nordan. She was dead.

Svava. And ever since then--you dear, queer old uncle--you have
considered yourself as married to her. (He nods.) And ever since the
evening you told me that--and I lay awake a long time, thinking over
it--I wanted, even when I was quite a young girl, to choose some one I
could have perfect confidence in. And then I chose wrong.

Nordan. Did you, Svava?

Svava. Do not ask me any more about that.--Then I chose once again, and
this time I was certain! For never had truer eyes looked in mine. And
how happy we were together! Day after day it always seemed new, and the
days were always too short. I dare not think about now. Oh, it is sinful
to deceive us so!--not deceit in words, it is true, but in letting
us give them our admiration and our most intimate confidences. Not in
words, no--and yet, it is in words; because they accept all we say, and
are silent themselves, and by that very fact make our words their own.
Our simple-mindedness pleases them as a bit of unspoilt nature, and it
is just by means of that that they deceive us. It creates an intimacy
between us and an atmosphere of happy give-and-take of jests, which we
think can exist only on one presupposition--and really it is all a sham.
I cannot understand how any one can so treat the one he loves--for he
did love me!

Nordan. He does love you.

Svava (getting u