Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/188



following day Minna showed me a copy of the letter that she intended to send to Stephensen.

We read it together in the little summer-house, because one of the aunts, who "was not all she ought to be," had turned up, and from her company Minna was anxious to save both herself and me.

The letter calmed my feelings, as it seemed well-fitted to make an end of all this misunderstanding. It was without any bitterness and free from any trace of sentimentality, and was also written with more dignity and calmness than I had expected her to show under circumstances that so deeply moved her feelings and remembrances.

While we were together at Rathen I had sometimes looked forward to walking with Minna in her own beautiful town, and I begged her now not to waste any time.

We went through several rather plain-looking streets and lanes, all alike, which, with their entirely flagged pavement, and without gutters and cellar-stairs, made a neater and cleaner impression than a Dane expects in such quarters. The two-storeyed houses only vary a little in grey or yellowish colour; but now and again a low building extends, the big sunken roof of which peeps down on the street through many of those real Saxonian lattice windows, which are shaped like half-closed eyes and, when placed close together, give to the tiled roof the impression of a 180