312 'GOD'S PEACE'
not withdraw it, I say : ' Yes, now I am on the other side of the fog.'
A little while after, when we parted, she says : 'When are you coming up to the mill? We are expecting you.'
THE NIOHT BETWEEN THE P* AND 2""* OF AUGUST.
XV T WAITED two days before I followed up the i invitation. I thought to myself: I don't suppose she meant me to go at once. But to-night I felt I must go. When I arrived, Greta stood in the door. 'Well, at last,' she said; 'father has already been teasing me and saying that you did not care for our company.' That made me feel at ease and I knew that I was welcome.
The miller's sitting-room, with windows looking out over the fjord, was like a cabin. It was a deep room with low ceiling, furnished with long yellow- polished horsehair sofa, a large folding-table, leather- covered chairs, two maps, and pictures of ships on the wall. In one corner stood an old-fashioned piano, in another the model of a ship, and round the wall, on shelves and cupboards, stuffed, tropical fish and shells, and over the table hung a swinging lamp.
Greta led me into this room to her father, whose broad, gigantic frame I at once recognised, but whose eyes under the bushy, grey brow looked pale and extinguished. He sat in the sofa corner, dressed in a blue pea-jacket, and puffed away at a heavy meerschaum pipe. Greta led me up to him.
