sake I had
to bring matters to a head rather quickly.

Mathilde. Yes, you took a good many people by surprise.

Axel. Including even yourself, I believe--not to mention the old folk
and Laura. But the worst of it is that I took my own happiness by
surprise, too.

Mathilde. What do you mean?

Axel. Of course I knew Laura was only a child; but I thought she would
grow up when she felt the approach of love. But she has never felt its
approach; she is like a bud that will not open, and I cannot warm the
atmosphere. But you could do that--you, in whom she has confided all her
first longings--you, whose kind heart knows so well how to sacrifice its
happiness for others. You know you are to some extent responsible, too,
for the fact that the most important event in her life came upon her a
little unpreparedly; so you ought to take her by the hand and guide her
first steps away from her parents and towards me--direct her affections
towards me--

Mathilde. I? (A pause.)

Axel. Won't you?

Mathilde. No--

Axel. But why not? You love her, don't you?

Mathilde. I do; but this is a thing--

Axel.--that you can do quite well! For you are better off than the rest
of us--you have many more ways of reaching a person's soul than we have.
Sometimes when we have been discussing something, and then you have
given your opinion, it has reminded me of the refrains to the old
ballads, which sum up the essence of the whole poem in two lines.

Mathilde. Yes, I have heard you flatter before.

Axel. I flatter? Why, what I have just asked you to do is a clearer
proof than anything else how great my--

Mathilde. Stop, stop! I won't do it!

Axel. Why not? At least be frank with me!

Mathilde. Because--oh, because--(Turns away.)

Axel. But what has made you so unkind? (MATHILDE stops for a moment, as
though she were going to answer; then goes hurriedly out.) What on earth
is the matter with her? Has anything gone wrong between her and Laura?
Or is it something about the house that is worrying her? She is too
level-headed to be disturbed by trifles.--Well, whatever it is, it must
look after itself; I have something else to think about. If the one of
them _can't_ understand me, and the other _won't_, and the old couple
neither can nor will, I must act on my own account--and the sooner the
better! Later on, it would look to other people like a rupture. It must
be done now, before we settle down to this state of things; for if we
were