“What a healthy girl!” said she; bade some one bring Helene to her, and drawing her towards her, kissed her on the forehead.

Helene and her companion had crossed to the other side of the hill, for he positively must see the “Buckthorn Swamp”; but when they got down there he did not know it again:  it was covered by luxuriant woods.

“Yes!  It is old Helgesen who deserves the credit of that,” she said.  “He noticed that an artificial embankment had converted this great flat into a swamp, so he cut through it.  I was only a child then, but I had my share in it.  They gave me a bit of ground down by the river to plant Kohl Kabi in.  I looked after it the whole summer.  Later on I had a larger piece.  With the profits we cut ditches up to here.  In the fourth year we bought plants.  In fact, he so arranged it, that I paid for it all with my work, the old rogue!”

When Rafael got home his mother was at table:  she had not waited for him, a sure sign that she felt aggrieved.  No attempts on his part to set things right succeeded.  She would not answer, and soon left the room.  It now struck him how pleasant it would have been for his mother if he had taken her with him to explore and make acquaintance with this new Hellebergene.  The evening before, in his father’s rooms, it had seemed as though nothing could ever separate them—­and the first thing in the morning he was off with some one else.  This evening he knew that nothing could be done, but next morning he begged her earnestly to come with them, and they would show her what he had seen the day before; but she only shook her head and took up a book.  Day after day he made a similar request, but always with the same result.  She thought that these invitations were merely formal, and so, from one point of view, they were.  He was most ready to appease her, most ready to show her everything, for he felt himself to blame, though he certainly thought that she might have understood; but her presence would have marred their tete-a-tete; he would have been embarrassed enough if she had acquiesced!

The Dean, with his wife and daughter, came the following Sunday to return Fru Kaas’s visit.  She was politeness itself, and specially thanked Helene for her care of Hellebergene.  Helene coloured without knowing why, but when Rafael also coloured, she blushed still deeper.  This was the event of the visit; nothing else of importance occurred.

In their daily walks through the fields and woods, the two young people soon exhausted the topic of Hellebergene.  He took up another theme.  His inventions became the topic of conversation.  He had acquired, from his studies with his mother, an unusual facility in explaining his meaning, and in Helene he found a listener such as he had rarely before met with.  She was sufficiently acquainted with the laws of nature to understand a simple description.  But all the same it was not his inventions but himself that he discoursed on.  He quite realised this, and became all the more eager.  Her eyes made his reasoning clearer.  He had never before had such complete faith in himself as when near her, and now no misgivings succeeded.