"So you did, yes. But as to your being beautiful or not, surely I ought to
know when I was sitting looking at you all the time?"
"Oh, you child!"
"And this evening you're lovelier still."
"There's some one coming!"
Two figures rise up suddenly behind the lilacs. Fruen and the young
engineer. Seeing it is only me, they breathe more easily again, and go on
talking as if I did not exist. And mark how strange is human feeling; I
had been wishing all along to be ignored and left in peace, yet now it
hurt me to see these two making so little account of me. My hair and beard
are turning grey, I thought to myself; should they not respect me at least
for that?
"Yes, you're lovelier still tonight," says the man again. I come up
alongside them, touching my cap carelessly, and pass on.
"I'll tell you this much: you'll gain nothing by it," says Fruen. And
then: "Here, you've dropped something," she calls to me.
Dropped something? My handkerchief lay on the path; I had dropped it on
purpose.
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