Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/34

 were striking rather for their brilliance than their size, and were apt to dart quickly from one object to another in a curious way of their own. Their irises, in which yellow and green were blended with brown, made the same impression on one as when, in a shady wooded cleft, one looks down into a stream, at the bottom of which soft sunbeams play; and the expression of them changed as rapidly as that of the rippling water under the movements of the foliage and the clouds.

I felt that they were impressed upon my memory for ever.

This coincidence of the Danish Dictionary was very striking. It appeared to me as an omen, the finger of fate, or, in short, something that had a meaning, and could not remain as an isolated fact. I did not quite believe her assertion that she might have gone as a governess to Denmark; but then, why should she have said so? More than all, why had she been on the point of crying without any apparent reason?

All this kept on working in my mind, whilst I lost myself in the valley and walked through the big fir wood right across to Polenzgrund, where I took my supper in the Walthersdorfer-Mill. The intense heat had given place to a most pleasant afternoon.

I still enjoyed nature, not, however, with my accustomed calmness, but with a spiritual elation, which resembled the bodily sensation one has after drinking freely of wine. This sensation is by no means disagreeable, for in rendering one's senses readily open to external influences, it at the same time makes things appear less distinct. Therefore it is easier for this "sweet lingering thought" to mingle with other impressions.

If I looked down into the sometimes quickly, sometimes