"Your mistake is quite intelligible, so you really have nothing to apologise for nor anything to regret on my account."
Her glance now fell on the little book, which I, in my confusion, kept twirling between my fingers. The colour mounted to her face.
"Perhaps this is your book?"
"I had just come to fetch it."
"Then I must apologise again for being so bold as to open it.… It was a strange surprise to me, for I am a Dane."
"I was quite sure of that," she answered. "I recognised it from the first words you spoke to me on board the steamer."
This remark of hers was not very flattering to me, as I secretly hoped my pronunciation to be so good, that a German might take me for a fellow-countryman living in a distant part.
"I suppose you have associated a good deal with Danes?" I asked.
"I have known a few countrymen of yours," she said, and suddenly her gaiety vanished.
"And these acquaintances have led to your studying a language so little used?"
"Yes," she answered hesitatingly, as if considering how she could bring the conversation to an end.
"Perhaps in some way I might be of help to you …"
"No, thank you—unfortunately. That is to say, there was some talk of my going as a governess to a family in Denmark, but the idea has now been given up."
These details about things which were no concern of
