en they returned to the coasting-steamer, genuine gratitude prompted
her to invite Joergen Thiis to go home with her to Krogskogen. "I can't
stand such a sudden break-up," she said.

He stayed for some days, delighted with the beauty and comfort of
everything. Such art taste as he possessed lay chiefly in the direction
of knick-knacks; he was devoted to foreign curios, and of these there
was abundance. The rooms and their furniture and decorations were
exactly to his taste. To Mrs. Dawes, who encouraged him to speak freely,
he confided that the comfort and quiet disposed him amorously. He sat
often and long at the piano extemporising; and it was always in an
erotic strain.

He treated Mary with the same deference when they were alone as when
they were in company with others. All the time she had known him he had
not let fall a single word which could be interpreted as a preface to
love-making, no, not even as the preface to a preface. And this she
appreciated.

They wandered together through the woods and the fields. They rowed
together to relations' houses to pay calls. Joergen had the key to the
bathing-house, where he went before any one else was up, and often again
after their excursions.

Mary herself had become more sociable. Joergen told her so.

"Yes," answered she. "The Norwegian young people associate with each
other more like brothers and sisters than those of other countries, and
are consequently different--freer, franker. They have infected me."

One morning Joergen had to go to town, and Mary accompanied him. She
wished to call on Uncle Klaus, his foster-father, whom she had not seen
since she came home.

Klaus was sitting behind a cloud of smoke, like a spider behind its grey
web. He jumped up when he saw Mary enter, declared he was ashamed of
himself, and led her into the big drawing-room. Joergen had warned her
that he was not likely to be in a good humour; he had been losing money
again. And they had not sat long in the empty, stiff drawing-room before
he began to complain of the times. As was his habit, he rounded his
back and sprawled out his legs, supporting his elbows on them and
pressing the points of his long fingers together.

"Yes, you two are well off, who do nothing but amuse yourselves!"

He possibly thought that this remark demanded some reparation, for his
next was: "I have never seen a handsomer pair!"

Joergen laughed, but coloured to the roots of his hair. Mary sat unmoved.