The conversation again grew lively, and when it was at its height, she pooh-poohed all their jokes so unmistakably that they were completely puzzled.  Rafael gave her a furious look, and then she jeered at him, “You boy!” she said.  After this Rafael answered her angrily, and let nothing pass without retaliation, rough, savage retaliation; he was worse than she was.

“But God bless me!” said good-natured Hans Ravn at length, “how you are altered, Rafael!” His genial kindly eyes gazed at him with a look which Rafael never forget.

“Ja, ich kan es nicht mehr aushalten” said the young Fru Ravn, with tears in her eyes.  She rose, her husband hurried to her, and they left together.  Rafael sat down again, with Angelika.  Those near them looked towards them and whispered together.  Angry and ashamed, he looked across at Angelika, who laughed.  Everything seemed to turn red before his eyes—­he rose; he had a wild desire to kill her there, before every one.  Yes! the temptation overpowered him to such an extent that he thought that people must notice it.

“Are you not well, Kaas?” he heard some one beside him say.

He could not remember afterwards what he answered, or how he got away; but still, in the street, he dwelt with ecstasy on the thought of killing her, of again seeing her face turn black, her arms fall powerless, her eyes open wide with terror; for that was what would happen some day.  He should end his life in a felon’s cell.  That was as certainly a part of his destiny as had been the possession of talents which he had allowed to become useless.

A quarter of an hour later he was at the observatory:  he scanned the heavens, but no stars were visible.  He felt that he was perspiring, that his clothes clung to him, yet he was ice-cold.  That is the future that awaits you, he thought; it runs ice-cold through your limbs.

Then it was that a new and, until then, unused power, which underlay all else, broke forth and took the command.

“You shall never return home to her, that is all past now, boy; I will not permit it any longer.”

What was it?  What voice was that?  It really sounded as though outside himself.  Was it his father’s?  It was a man’s voice.  It made him clear and calm.  He turned round, he went straight to the nearest hotel, without further thought, without anxiety.  Something new was about to begin.

He slept for three hours undisturbed by dreams; it was the first night for a long time that he had done so.

The following morning he sat in the little pavilion at the station at Eidsvold with his mother’s packet of letters laid open before him.  It consisted of a quantity of papers which he had read through.

The expanse of Lake Mjosen lay cold and grey beneath the autumn mist, which still shrouded the hillsides.  The sound of hammers from the workshops to the right mingled with the rumble of wheels on the bridge; the whistle of an engine, the rattle of crockery from the restaurant; sights and sounds seethed round him like water boiling round an egg.