At this moment something happened, that at the time seemed to me supernatural, and does so still when recalling it.
The gravel crunched under light quick steps. I started. The situation reminded me so much of the old days when I had sat there and Minna had come, that I fully and firmly believed it was an hallucination. And really, it sounded exactly as if it was a repetition—a copy I could almost say of those steps. "If this hallucination continues," I thought, "I shall see her, and what will then happen to me? God help me, am I really on the point of going out of my mind, as I said, half jokingly, but yesterday…?"
I jumped down from the table with a cry, and with a cry Minna stopped in front of the grotto—yes, Minna herself, no vision!
We had not yet controlled ourselves, when Stephensen appeared and bowed with an astonished, but at the same time a little ironical smile, that clearly enough said: "This is really a coincidence, which looks like a plan."
The usual exclamations: "You here, Harald? That I call a surprise!" "I thought you were in England, Mr. Fenger." "I imagined you in Copenhagen, Mr. Stephensen," masked for a few moments our painful embarrassment.
After the first nervous rapture, which the sudden sight of one's beloved infallibly produces, had calmed down, I felt a painful disappointment. The lady and her husband on a
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