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as a dowager in an obscure corner of Jutland and at last,
perhaps, marrying a country squire, which was the utmost
she could aspire to if she stayed. Her rôle at court was
played out, for Ulrik Frederik was in such high favor that
he would have no trouble in keeping her away from it and
it from her. No, Sti’s advice was that she should demand
her fortune in ready money and, as soon as it was paid
her, leave the country, never to set foot in it again. With
her beauty and grace, she could win a fairer fate in France
than here in this miserable land with its boorish nobility
and poor little imitation of a court.
He told her so, and the frugal life at Kalö made a good
background for the alluring pictures he sketched of the
splendid and brilliant court of Louis the Fourteenth. Marie
was fascinated, and came to regard France as the theatre
of all her dreams.
Sti Högh was as much under the spell of his love for
Marie as ever, and he often spoke to her of his passion,
never asking or demanding anything, never even expressing
hope or regret, but taking for granted that she did not
return his love and never would. At first Marie heard him
with a certain uneasy surprise, but after a while she
became absorbed in listening to these hopeless musings on a
love of which she was the source, and it was not without
a certain intoxicating sense of power that she heard
herself called the lord of life and death to so strange a person as
Sti Högh. Before long, however, Sti’s lack of spirit began to
irritate her. He seemed to give up the fight merely because
the object of it was unattainable, and to accept tamely the
fact that too high was too high. She did not exactly doubt
that there was real passion underneath his strange words
or grief behind his melancholy looks, but she wondered
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