"Then for G.o.d's sake leave her alone, Madam, leave her to G.o.d. If you are right about her, and she does marry, let it be at her own time and by her own choice; nothing but harm can come of forcing her inclinations in any way."

"But, Doctor, she has already refused two of the most eligible--I think it a poor return after all I have done for her--"

"Let her refuse ten, let her refuse twenty! To show her grat.i.tude must she sell her body to the highest bidder?"

Fru Boyesen bounded rather than rose from her chair; the very ribbons on her bonnet bristled with indignation. Her back was a study in outraged virtue as she moved majestically towards the door. The doctor was before her.

"One moment, Madam, I beg!"

"I have heard quite enough, more than enough," she said in a frozen voice.

"My dear lady, I beg your pardon if my words were too forcible; what I intended to say was that should your niece marry a man for his position, without love for him, it would be equivalent to selling herself, and you who have her ultimate happiness at heart would not wish that, I am sure." He smiled, and he had a most winning smile. "My dear Fru Boyesen, you come to discuss this matter with me; I am an old man, you are a widow, why should we mince matters?"

His tone, grave and kindly, mollified her somewhat: she wavered an instant, and answered.

"It shocked me that you could speak of my niece's selling herself--an honourable marriage--"

"Just so, Madam, an 'honourably' married woman who does not love her husband and has not loved him, who has married him because he is wealthy or of good family--" he deliberately brought his argument within the range of her comprehension--"is lower in my eyes than the woman who gives herself for love only, dispensing with ceremony, or who sells herself for hire, to get her bread."

Fru Boyesen gasped with horror.

"Society!" she murmured, "religion! morality!"

"Society, indeed, dear lady, but neither religion nor morality as I understand them."

Fru Boyesen was in deep waters, her argumentative powers were not sufficient to cope with the Doctor, and she knew it, still she tried once more.

"But Herr Doctor, I don't want her to marry without love, I only want her to make up her mind to love a man she can marry--and do it soon!"

The Doctor rubbed his hands. He had not been able to resist the temptation of shocking the good lady; he was often tempted to jolt a bourgeois mind out of its self-complacent rut. Fru Boyesen's bewildered and horrified face had amused him intensely, but he realized that to push the matter further might seriously harm Ragna's cause, so he contented himself with replying:

"I am sure, Madam, that your niece will not disappoint you in the end; but if you really desire her welfare, do not urge the matter for the present, I beg of you. Give the child time--that is a panacea for all ills, you know. She is very young, and should she marry merely to please you, her inevitable unhappiness would be heavy on your conscience."

Fru Boyesen retied her bonnet strings but with less firm a touch than usual. The Professor had frightened her and, for the moment, shaken her conventional social beliefs; however, she made a last tentative effort.

"Then I am to understand that you positively refuse to use your influence, Herr Doctor?"

"Most decidedly, Madam--and as you value your future peace of mind and Ragna's, do not attempt to force her."

"And you advise me to do nothing, to wait?"

"Why not try a change of scene? A journey would probably drive some of the 'ologies' and 'isms' you object to out of her mind, and she would very likely come home prepared to settle down."

Fru Boyesen sighed. She was not satisfied with the result of the interview--it had been so different from what she had expected. She took her leave, thinking to herself, "Poor man, one can see that he doesn't know much of the practical side of life! How could he, being a bachelor?"

Doctor Tommsen, watching her substantial figure retreat down the street, drummed on the window and said to himself:

"What fools these women are! And the old ones who ought to know better are always trying to drag the girls into the same miserable mistakes they have made themselves." He was sorry for Ragna--"They will probably end by making a fool of her too, one girl can't stand out against the whole State of Society!"

CHAPTER IX

Fru Boyesen went to Fru Bjork for consolation and over a cup of coffee discussed the Doctor's refusal.

Fru Bjork was more at a loss than her friend to understand Ragna's indifference to the advantages of the married state, and she held up her hands in horror at Fru Boyesen's account of Dr. Tommsen's speeches--it may be said that they lost nothing in the telling. Sentence by sentence she repeated them, punctuating them with indignant sniffs, and appreciative sips at her cup.

Fru Bjork listened, her fat hands clasped on her rotund person, her cap awry over her kindly face, her eyes wide and round with dismay.

"He says," stated Fru Boyesen, "that we respectable married women sell ourselves for hire like the women on the streets. He says that marriage is immoral and irreligious."

"Perhaps," said Fru Bjork, "he is a believer in free love. Try a little of this seed-cake, my dear, I made it myself."

Fru Boyesen helped herself and continued, her mouth half-full,

"He must be,--anyway he is outrageous, and it's no longer a mystery to me where Ragna gets her absurd ideas from. If I'd known what sort of a man he was, I never should have let her study under him. But his name is so well known! He is so universally respected! I don't understand it at all!"

Fru Bjork agreed with her--she had the amiable habit of agreeing with everyone, it saved so much trouble, and Fru Boyesen went on to recount the rest of the interview. Fru Bjork approved of the suggestion of sending Ragna away for a time.

"Travelling is good for young girls," she opined, "it takes the nonsense out of them and when they have seen how things are done in other countries, they are ready enough to settle down in their own."

Astrid had returned home some months before, and was a great favourite among the young people. Her vivacity and ready, if rather shallow wit, her delicate almost affected prettiness, her coquettishness attracted the young men and her good humour and readiness to oblige made her friends among the girls. It was natural for her to try to please everyone, and she exercised her blandishments on all who came near her, from the servants in the house, to the most important personages of her social world. She was quite sincere in her desire to please; approbation was the meat and drink of her existence. She admired Ragna and rather stood in awe of her attainments, but could not understand her indifference to social pleasures. Ragna had not cared to tell her more than the barest outline of the momentous home journey, and if she had, Astrid would not have understood, for constancy to a dream-memory could form no part of her spiritual make-up. She was not one to whom any impression would be lasting; to her, lovers might come and go as b.u.t.terflies to a flower,--to all she would give of her smiles, but no one of them would leave a mark on her soul. Fidelity, to her, would mean the imposed constraint of public opinion, not the keeping of herself to one, and one only. She wished to marry, and to marry well,--all things considered, one man is very like another, when it comes to matrimony, she thought.

Innumerable times she had fancied herself in love, and each time she had gone to Ragna with the tale of her infatuation. After the first time or two, when she had taken the affair seriously, Ragna would listen with an amused smile,--it was always the same story over again,--and she ceased to be surprised, when a few days or weeks later, the Star waned and a new luminary rose above the horizon. Astrid had once said to her:

"One starts out with the idea that men are all different, but when they have kissed you, you know they are all alike--if one could not see, one would swear it was always the same man." Ragna had with difficulty repressed her impulse to protest, "but what's the use?" she thought, and wisely kept her own counsel.

Finally Astrid had announced her engagement, much to her own satisfaction. It was an excellent match and her mother was pleased; she stipulated, however, for a year's delay before the marriage, as Astrid was barely twenty, and far from strong.

Fru Bjork, then, on the strength of her daughter's conventional social success, felt herself complacently superior to Fru Boyesen, in the way that an ordinary hen would feel herself comfortably above one who had hatched ducklings. She could not but gloat a little over her friend's discomfiture before she presented a proposition of her own; she therefore remained silent a few minutes and pressed Fru Boyesen's hand sympathetically.

Fru Boyesen, who in ordinary circ.u.mstances would have resented anything savouring of commiseration, but who felt too perplexed to think of anything beyond her present difficulty, presently afforded an opening, by remarking that though a few months abroad would probably benefit Ragna and bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind, yet the thing was impossible; who was there to take her? Fru Boyesen herself had no desire to set forth on a journey, too many interests and occupations kept her at home.

Fru Bjork then suggested that Ragna be entrusted to her care.

"I have been thinking," she said, "of taking Astrid to spend the winter in Italy. The doctor advises it--she is just a little delicate, you know,--and why should not Ragna come too? She would be company for Astrid and such a serious, steady girl as she is would give me no trouble--I should enjoy having her with me."

Fru Boyesen, secretly much pleased by her friend's proposition, would not seem to seize upon it at once; she agreed to think it over, and the ladies parted on that understanding.

CHAPTER X

Ragna was now almost twenty-one; she had slightly matured in appearance, the curves of her figure were rounder and fuller, but her eyes still had the expression of the idealist, the visionary; she was as p.r.o.ne as ever to credulity, to taking those with whom she came in contact at their own valuation.