She was
standing in the doorway. Several heard what she said. She laughed, as
if speaking in jest, but her face was very pale.
I made no answer to this; I only murmured:
"It was accidental; she just came out, and we met in the passage..."
Some time passed--an hour, perhaps. A glass was upset over a lady's
dress. As soon as Edwarda saw it, she cried:
"What has happened? That was Glahn, of course."
I had not done it: I was standing at the other end of the room when it
happened. After that I drank pretty hard again, and kept near the door,
to be out of the way of the dancers.
The Baron still had the ladies constantly round him. He regretted that
his collections were packed away, so that he could not show them--that
bunch of weed from the White Sea, the clay from Korholmerne, highly
interesting stone formations from the bottom of the sea. The ladies
peeped curiously at his shirt studs, the five-pointed coronets--they
meant that he was a Baron, of course. All this time the Doctor created
no sensation; even his witty oath, _Dod og Pinsel_, no longer had any
effect. But when Edwarda was speaking, he was always on the spot,
correcting her language, embarrassing her with little shades of meaning,
keeping her down with calm superiority.
She said:
".
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