til the breath was out of her. Nine had danced with her,
and then came up the king himself as the tenth, and when he became weary
he cut her girdle in two, on which the blood streamed from her mouth and
she died.]

"She was a northern Turandot!" said Otto; "the stony heart itself was
forced to break and bleed. There is really a jest in having the marble
painted. She stands before future ages as if she lived--a stone image,
white and red, only a mask of beauty. She is a warning to young ladies!"

"Yes, against dancing!" said Sophie, smiling at Otto's extraordinary
gravity.

"And yet it must be a blessed thing," exclaimed he, "a very blessed
thing, amid pealing music, arm-in-arm with one's beloved, to be able to
dance life away, and to sink bleeding before her feet!"

"And yet only to see that she would dance with a new one!" said Sophie.

"No, no!" exclaimed Otto, "that you could not do! that you will not do!
O Sophie, if you knew!"--He approached her still nearer, bent his head
toward her, and his eye had twofold fire and expression in it.

"You must come with us and see the cats!" said the Kammerjunker, and
sprang in between them.

"Yes, it is charming!" said Sophie. "You will have an opportunity, Mr.
Thostrup, of moralizing over the perishableness of female beauty!"

"In the evening, when we drive home together," thought Otto to himself
consolingly, "in the mild summer-evening no Kammerjunker will disturb
me. It must, it shall be decided! Misfortune might subject the
wildness of childhood, but it gave me confidence, it never destroyed my
independence; Love has made me timid,--has made me weak. May I thereby
win a bride?"

Gravely and with a dark glance he followed after Sophie and her guide.

CHAPTER XL

"In vain his beet endeavors were;
Dull was the evening, and duller grew."--LUDOLF SCHLEF.

"Seest thou how its little life
The bird hides in the wood?
Wilt thou be my little wife--
Then do it soon. Good!
--A bridegroom am I."--Arion.

Close beside St. Knud's Church, where once the convent stood, is now the
dwelling of a private man. [Author's Note: See Oehlenschlaeger's Jorney
to Funen.] The excellent hostess here, who once charmed the public on
the Danish stage as Ida Munster, awaited the family to dinner.

After dinner they wandered up and down the garden, which extended to the
Odense River.

In the dusk of evening Otto went to visit the German Heinrich;