Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/148

 peasant's room with its simple air of comfort and sober Sunday festivity.

Miss Ragnhild, from the further end of the table, several times tried to attract his attention in order to drink a glass of wine with him. But he intentionally avoided her eye; because, of all the company present, she was the most displeasing to him. He considered that her dress was in questionable taste, nay, even shocking; and he noticed with shame how Johansen, who sat near her, absolutely devoured with his eyes her white neck and arms, which shone through the thin stuff, while he bent over her making pleasant remarks. Nor did she listen with indifference to this absurd caricature of a man about town. She lay back in her chair looking quite lively. The heat, the wine, and the sound of the many voices had brought a slight tinge of colour to her cheeks; and when she smiled, her eyes shone with excitement.

In his thoughts he compared her with the sober, healthy, rosy-cheeked peasant girl in whose company he had lately been, and who, in her simple dark red dress, seemed to him a hundred times prettier than any of these dressed-up ladies in their flaunting dresses of silk and tulle. He glanced over the assembled company, from the Provst and the squires with their self-satisfied faces to the stolid row of peasants—and he thought how woefully he had been deceived. He—who at one time thought that he had fled