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Updated: May 31, 2025
The intense light of the late sun fell upon the girl's unconscious face, and Arnfinn lay, gazing up into it, and wondering at its rare beauty; but he saw only the clean cut of its features and the purity of its form, being too shallow to recognize the strong and heroic soul which had struggled so long for utterance in the life of which he had been a blind and unmindful witness.
Arnfinn Vording's career had presented that subtle combination of farce and tragedy which most human lives are apt to be; and if the tragic element had during his early years been preponderating, he was hardly himself aware of it; for he had been too young at the death of his parents to feel that keenness of grief which the same privation would have given him at a later period of his life.
Arnfinn pulled a thick black note-book from his breast pocket, opened it in his lap, and read: "August 3, 5 A. M. My little invalid is doing finely; he seemed to relish much a few dozen flies which I brought him in my hand. His pulse is to-day, for the first time, normal. He is beginning to step on the injured leg without apparent pain.
But the pastor, I am told, grew very wroth, and demanded that his nephew should first take his second and third degrees, attaching, besides, some very odious stipulations regarding average in study and college standing, before there could be any talk about engagement or matrimony. So, at present, Arnfinn is still studying, and the fair-haired Inga is still waiting.
Augusta stole with soundless tread through the transparent gloom which lingered under those huge black crowns, and Arnfinn followed impatiently after. Suddenly she motioned to him to stand still, and herself bent forward in an attitude of surprise and eager observation.
Toward Arnfinn, Augusta had, although of his own age, early assumed a kind of elder-sisterly relation; she had been his comforter during all the trials of his boyhood; had yielded him her sympathy with that eager impulse which lay so deep in her nature, and had felt forlorn when life had called him away to where her words of comfort could not reach him.
Strand paced the floor with large steps, pouring out his long pent-up emotion in violent tirades of self-accusation and regret; while Arnfinn sat on the bed, trying to soothe his excitement by assuring him that he was not such a monster as, for the moment, he had believed himself to be, but only succeeding, in spite of all his efforts, in pouring oil on the flames.
That great day had now come; Arnfinn sat at Inga's side playing with her white fingers, which lay resting on his knee, and covering the depth of his feeling with harmless banter about her "amusingly unclassical little nose."
Arnfinn, after a minute's silence, repeated his remark, whereupon his fair cousin wrenched his cane out of his hand, and held it threateningly over his head. "Will you be a good boy and listen?" she exclaimed, playfully emphasizing each word with a light rap on his curly pate. "Ouch! that hurts," cried Arnfinn, and dodged.
It was not many weeks after this happy evening that Arnfinn and the maiden with the "amusingly unclassical nose" presented themselves in the pastor's study and asked for his paternal and unofficial blessing.
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