Laura quickly leaned down over the
window-sill beneath it and begged: "Come to me! come and give me your
hand."
"No."
When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:
"Good-by, Mogens!"
He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on:
"And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does
not!"
* * *
The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass
swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a
little, the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by
thousands of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged
restlessly at their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to
nod, and on the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and
fro. Towards the land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the
young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and
fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings
swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the
window-panes became covered with moisture.
There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of
the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the
green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the
dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were
drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all
of life, empty behind him, dark before him.
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