There where the blind was pulled a little to one side he saw the round-headed Gunda again; the back of her head was so near him that he would have liked to push the pane in and ask her where Silla was?

He felt the shaking of the floor and the music twice as much where he was standing; it was as if the whole ball had got into his head.

Now he caught a glimpse of a sloping shoulder and half a back in an overcoat, with a cane sticking out of the owner’s pocket—­and part of a fashionable hat-brim.

The figure was smoking a cigar and bending down as if to talk.

To whom?—­To whom?

For it was Ludvig Veyergang’s, that narrow, straight back, that seemed in its pride as if it could not bend above the hips.

And then that way with his arm and his eye-glass.

Now he was gone; he must be dancing.

The clear glimpse he could get through the little opening in the blind was dimmed by moisture.  Only when a heavy drop ran down the pane in the heat inside, could he catch a fraction of a glimpse through the streak.

There came Veyergang’s shadow, with stick and hat again, and lower down the crooked outline of a woman’s head in lively gesticulation.

Again the figure with the stick disappeared, and Nikolai prepared to watch for it.

A drop just wept a smooth streak down the pane, and the next moment he caught a glimpse of a dancing figure—­only a bent head and a half-hidden face.

He had seen enough—­more than if he had had a hundred chandeliers to see by.

Immediately after, Nikolai was in the stream in front of the door.

It opened and closed incessantly to admit those who gave up tickets, and disclosed, in misty perspective, a miscellaneous confusion of hot, flushed faces.

Now and then a pair came out and hastened up to the large restaurant.

He heard both exclamations and taunts.

“Now then! now then!” came from the crowd.

Nikolai only worked his way towards the door.  If once he stood there—!

“Ticket?”

Nikolai did not answer.

“Ticket, man?  Ticket?”

Nikolai only pressed boldly a step nearer.

The police-constable made a movement, but met a look in Nikolai’s face which made him feel justified in restraining himself.  This pertinacious, silent working man looked as though he could strike.

The door continued to open and shut as incessantly as before, and both the constable and the ticket collector had become in a measure reconciled to the man who stood there so persistently—­it almost looked as if he had a lawful business there, with that bundle in his hand—­when Nikolai suddenly put his smith’s shoulder to the door and pressed violently against it.

The ticket collector resisted in vain with his body; his hands were occupied.

Through the opening Nikolai had seen Silla, red, laughing, and out of breath with dancing, coming down the room with Ludvig Veyergang; he was looking about short-sightedly, with his hat pressed down sideways over his forehead and his eye-glass in one eye, with light arrogance, as if he were only going about his lawful business, when he was ruining a young girl.