As she stood outside the door she knew it was Salve, although she had always pictured him to herself as a common sailor.  She stood there trembling all over, and fumbling with the latch of the door in the greatest agitation, evidently debating with herself whether she should dare go in again.  She pressed upon the latch, in the certainty that it would go up before she had actually decided that she would go in; and it did so.  The door opened again of itself, and Elizabeth entered with downcast eyes, and scarlet in the face, and passed through the room, making a slight inclination of her head, as if for greeting, as she passed him.  She had reached the opposite door when she heard a quiet bitter laugh behind her.

At once she turned, with pride in every feature of her face, and looked at him.

“How do you do, Salve Kristiansen?” she said, firmly and quietly.

“How do you do, Elizabeth?” he replied, rather huskily, getting up and looking confused.

“Are you lying here in Amsterdam with some vessel?”

He sat down again, for there was something in her manner that denied approach.

“No; in Puermurende,” he replied.  “I only came in here to—­”

“You are in the timber line, then, now?”

“Yes—­Elizabeth,” he ventured to add, in another tone, which had a whole volume of meaning in it.  But she took her leave of him now in the same proud manner, and left the room.

Salve sat for a while with compressed lips, looking down upon the table before him.  When she turned round the first time at the door, something told him that she would come in again; but he had expected quite a different kind of scene.  A good deal of the tyrant had been developed in him since they had last met; and when she had come in so quietly and so humbly, with the acknowledgment of the great wrong she had done him written upon her face, he felt himself at once, with a certain bitter and devouring pleasure, upon the judgment-seat.  He must first see her crushed before him; then he would have forgiven her, and loved her with all the passion of his soul.

But as she stood there by the door, looking so grand in her pride, and so pale with repressed mortification, and spoke so calmly, he had felt that in that moment he had been separated farther from her than ever he had been in all his wanderings at the other side of the globe.

He sat there with his mind in a chaotic state of desperation and sorrow, and of anger with himself.  What a grand creature she was! and he—­how pitiful and petty!  He set down the mug, which he had been absently toying with, hard on the table, and went out.