dog was! But now half asleep, she confuses the dog
"What" with Maurits and she thinks that the dog has his white
forehead. Then she laughs. She laughs as easily as she cries. She
has inherited that from her father.

II

How has "it" come? That which she dares not call by name?

"It" has come like the dew to the grass, like the color to the
rose, like the sweetness to the berry, imperceptibly and gently
without announcing itself beforehand.

It is also no matter how "it" came or what "it" is. Were it good or
evil, fair or foul, still it is forbidden; that which never ought
to exist. "It" makes her anxious, sinful, unhappy.

"It" is that of which she never wishes to think. "It" is what shall
be torn away and thrown out; and yet it is nothing that can be
seized and caught. She shuts her heart to "it," but it comes in
just the same. "It" turns back the blood in her veins and flows
there, drives the thoughts from her brain and reigns there, dances
through her nerves and trembles in her finger-tips. It is
everywhere in her, so that if she had been able to take away
everything else of which her body consisted and to have left "it"
behind, there would remain a complete impression of her. And yet
"it" was nothing.

She wishes never to think of "it," and yet she has to think of "it"
constantly. How has she become so wicked? And then she searches and
wonders how "it" came.

Ah Downie! How tender are our souls, and how easily awakened are
our hearts!

She was sure that "it" had not come at breakfast, surely not at
breakfast.

Then she had only been frightened and shy. She had been so
terrified when she came down to breakfast and found no Maurits,
only Uncle Theodore and the old lady.

It had been a clever idea of Maurits to go hunting; although it was
impossible to discover what he was hunting in midsummer, as the old
lady remarked. But he knew of course that it was wise to keep away
from his uncle for a few hours until the latter became calm again.
He could not know that she was so shy, nor that she had almost
fainted when she had found him gone and herself left alone with
uncle and the old lady. Maurits had never been shy. He did not know
what torture it is.

That breakfast, that breakfast! Uncle had as a beginning asked the
old lady if she had heard the story of Sigrid the beautiful. He did
not ask Downie, neither would she have been able to answer. The old
lady knew the story well, but he told it just the sam