This smart gentleman was Axel Stephensen.
At once he began to take off his right glove and to walk towards us; Minna also began to unbutton hers, but it fitted tightly, and she was still pulling at it when he stopped in front of us.
"Oh, please, Minna, don't trouble, between old friends"
But Minna continued determinedly to stare—with a queer smile—at her glove, for the obstinacy of which she was perhaps grateful. At last she got the hand free—the hand that now wore my ring. It appeared to me that she caressed this magic love-token with her eyes, and that Stephensen stared at it morosely. She glanced at him in shaking hands, and with a gesture which made the ring sparkle she introduced us to one another.
"My fiancé, Harald Fenger."
We bowed almost too politely and assured one another that it was a pleasure and an honour, but I noticed that his aplomb in this ordeal was greater than mine, and this added to the irritation that his sudden appearance had already aroused in me.
"You have come here"—Minna was on the point of making the same unnecessary remark which her mother had bestowed upon me, but she had enough presence of
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