Ingolf.  Were you really in love with me then?

Hadda Padda.  You don’t know? ...  Then I did succeed in hiding it?

Ingolf.  Why did you hide it, Hadda?  Why, I almost believed you bore me a grudge.  You seemed to hold more aloof each day.

Hadda Padda.  And even that did not betray me?

Ingolf.  Why did you hide it, Hadda?

(Footsteps are heard outside.)

Hadda Padda [kisses Ingolf hastily, gets up, and seats herself at his side, takes his hand].  Don’t you understand, dear, I was afraid of knowing the certainty.  The stronger my love grew, the more carefully I had to hide it.  I dared not risk those beautiful dream-children of uncertainty for a disguised certainty.  Whenever we talked together, and you looked up at me, I was startled.  I thought you understood, and your hurried glance reached me only after the fear of seeing the answer in it.

Ingolf.  You, the most sincere of women, could cherish so strong a love and seem so cold.

Hadda Padda.  Now I have made too great a virtue of my love.  Some of my reserve was pride.  Just think, you lived with us during your entire schooltime, and in the summer sister and I were by turns at your home.  We grew up, you, handsome and manly, and a lord of pleasures; and you always seemed to be careful not to pay me greater attention than the other girls, especially at parties.  That was why I drew back.—­I was eighteen, you were twenty; you were graduated and went abroad.  And poor, proud little Hadda Padda was left alone.

Ingolf.  Poor proud little Hadda Padda. [They laugh.]

Hadda Padda.  Then when you came back the next spring, it was Kristrun’s turn to go to the country.  And since then, you have not been home during the summer.

Ingolf.  And when you went to Copenhagen the following winter, it just happened to be the only year I stayed home.

Hadda Padda.  Then I thought it surely was the will of fate to separate us.  But I loved you even more.  I could not give up hope.  Not even when you wrote home, the year before last, that you had decided to live abroad.  I got that news on the shortest day of the year.  I watched the twilight darken into night until the very blackness swam before my eyes in blood-red spots.  It was then I made up my mind to go.

Ingolf.  Yes, you came in the autumn.

Hadda Padda.  And it was not before December, at a meeting of the Icelandic Society—­we sat alone, in an outer room.  Then I placed my fate in your hand.

Ingolf.  Then you placed your hand in mine.

Hadda Padda.  Then I placed my life in your hand.  I willed all my power into my hand and placed it in yours.  That instant, nothing but my hand lived.  Had you thrust it away, I would not now be living.