Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/215

 "I am afraid I do you little honour as a pupil, Miss Ragnhild!"

"Well! I cannot flatter myself with that—I suppose you are going to see your fiancée now?" she asked hurriedly.

"Yes."

"Then greet her from me, and give her my warmest congratulations."

had not closed her eyes all night either. She had come home in the evening in a half desperate state; her parents were fortunately in bed, so she was able to creep into her room and undress without being seen by anybody. Here she lay hour after hour, huddled up in bed with the corner of the sheet stuffed into her mouth, so that her despairing sobs should not be heard.

Although the idea that a young priest or a popular leader would sometime—like the prince in a fairy tale—cross her path, fall in love with her, and raise her, as his wife, far above the earthbound life of a peasant, to the summit of a higher intellectual life, was, as a matter of fact, no stranger to her, for it had been part of her dream-life ever since she as a school-girl had attended one of the big "Friends' Meetings" over at Sandinge; and although it was indeed true, as her friends