We walked slowly back. At the corner of the shed was a big, blue letter-box. Minna smiled, pulled a letter out of her pocket, and held it in front of me so that I might read the address, which was, as I had guessed, Stephensen's. Then, having looked at me with a questioning glance, which said, "Shall I?" she stretched out her hand and put it under the flap. The letter fell with a dull sound into the empty box. Though this sound gave me the answer I longed for, it, at the same time, raised in me a faint feeling of uneasiness, as of a bad omen. This passing and apparently quite uncalled-for feeling I remember most distinctly, though not for a moment did I yield to it. For I had already drawn her to me, and soon felt my embrace returned with a fervour which had not so much the character of passion as of deep tenderness. Her strong maiden-arms in thus clinging to me seemed to seek to bind us so closely together that nothing could part us. When she noticed that I gasped for breath, she suddenly let me go.
"Have I hurt you? I am so violent."
She looked so terrified, as if I really might have broken to pieces in her arms, that involuntarily I burst out laughing, and covered her face with kisses, until she hushed me with a still startled, yet roguish, look peeping out of wide-open eyes, and whispered from half-parted lips on which she laid her finger. But
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