Doubtless there is not another street in Stockholm as ugly, and not another house as old, as dirty, and as gloomy. The entrance gate has the inviting appearance of a disused gallows. The rubble stones in the yard have moved more closely together in the course of time, so that a few small blades of grass have been able to shoot up. The house stands by itself, like an old hermit who has sought a solitary spot in which to collapse. There has once been an Assaying Office in the yard, and the outside walls are blackened with smoke. The chinks between the window frames and the walls are grown over, and the house looks as if it had not washed its face or eyes for a generation. The foundation has settled, and the building is stooping to the left. The leaking gutter has been weeping tears which have drawn black furrows all over the front of the building; the plastering is crumbling off here and there, and on windy nights one can hear it rattling down the walls into the street below. The house looks like an old dowager house of poverty, recklessness, carelessness, and vice.

And yet there are two people who cannot pass through the street without stopping to look at the miserable, frowning old building with emotion almost amounting to love. To them the entrance gate is a triumphal arch, the weeds and the gutter a green meadow, and a murmuring brook, the black house a charming ruin, containing lovely, rose-red memories. It is more, even, for whenever they pass it, the air vibrates with music, perfumes rise from the earth, and they see the sun shining even on the cloudiest autumn day; there have been times when they forgot themselves so far as to kiss each other; but they have always been a little mad, these good people.

Three years ago our young friend—we may call him friend since he repented of his youthful errors, apologised to society, and became a respectable individual, serving the country and wearing purple in the House of Parliament—our young friend, I say, was busy on the third floor of the ugly old house with a sheet of pins between his lips, a hammer in his coat-pocket, and a pair of pincers under his arm; he was standing on a ladder, putting up curtains in a small room, furnished only with a tiny sofa, a tiny dressing-table, a small desk, and a very small bed with white curtains.

In the dining-room the faithful Isaac, in shirt-sleeves, was engaged in spreading paste on a piece of wallpaper, stretched on an ironing-board which rested on two chairs; he was whistling and singing one unknown song after the other to quite unheard-of tunes. When he was tired of working, he prepared luncheon on an empty box standing before the window.

Outside the sun was shining into the neighbour's garden. It was a tiny garden squeezed between the walls of the houses; it had a pear tree in full bloom, and two elder bushes covered with blossoms; between the gables a piece of blue sky was visible and the mast heads of the timber barges in the harbour.

Isaac had been to the dairy; had bought sandwiches and porter; had papered the future mistress's room; had purchased oleanders and ivy, so that the landing windows with their black frames should not shock the young wife as she entered her new home; he would have liked to paint them, but he was afraid that she might object to the smell.

A cab stopped before the front door.

"It's Borg," said Isaac. "What the dickens does he want here? And that pest, Levin, is with him!"

It was a long visit, lasting ten minutes, and a disagreeable one; but Falk bore it patiently, like any other trial; he had for ever broken with the past; in one respect at least; in another he was bound, for he had been compelled during the ten minutes to sign once more.

The next visitors were the sister-in-law, Mrs. Falk, and Mrs. Homan. They found the paper in the dining-room too dark, and the paper in the young wife's room too light. They thought the curtains in the husband's room were not wide enough, the carpet a bad match to the furniture, the clock old-fashioned, and the chandelier too dear for its plainness. One piece of furniture in the young wife's room especially roused their critical faculty, and gave rise to a long, whispered conversation. They called the kitchen black, the landing dirty, the entrance terrible; but otherwise they said everything was quite nice, much nicer than the yard, where there was not even a porter, led one to expect.

This was the second plague, and it passed like everything else in this world.

But Isaac had lost some of his gaiety after the criticism of his wallpapers, and Falk realized for a moment that it was a miserable hole. He opened the windows to let out the evil spirits which had invaded his pleasure garden. Isaac declared that during the wedding days he would have the two women shut up in the debtors' prison, so as to keep them safely away.

And then—then she came. He was standing at the window, and he saw her when she was still too far off to be seen; he expected to be believed when he maintained that she radiated light and that the street through which she was walking was bathed in sunshine. Of course he could have told endless stories of her kindness, sweetness, and beauty; but not even she believed them, and it is not worth while repeating them.

She entered her future home and found everything charming. Isaac went into the kitchen to split some wood and light the kitchen fire. Nobody missed him until he returned with a tray bearing some cups of chocolate. It amused him; he knew that lovers never miss anybody in the wide world, and he found the terrible selfishness, which is called love, a very amiable quality; moreover, everybody admits that it is justified.

"What people said about it?" They said:

"Well, and so Falk is married?"

"Is he? Whom did he marry?"

"A schoolmistress!"

"Ugh! A woman with blue spectacles and short hair!"

And the questioner had all the information he wanted.

If the answer had been: "He's married old Kochstrom's daughter," the second question would have been: "Did he get any money with her?"

The world asks no further questions, and everything would be all right—if this were all. But the world demands that a couple which has three times given the clergyman the trouble to read the banns and the community to listen to them; which has forced its fellow-creatures to engage in genealogical research and send a reporter to the wedding—the world demands that such a couple shall be happy—woe to it if it is not!

Supposing that on coming home from school, tired with her work, angry at a slight, depressed because some of her efforts have proved a failure, she should meet a friend in the street who takes her hand and says: "You don't look too happy, Elizabeth," then woe to him!

Supposing that on leaving his office, in despair because he has been overlooked instead of promoted, he should meet a friend who finds him looking depressed, then woe to her!

Unhappy people, if you dare to be anything but happy!

It was a winter evening two or three years later; she was bending over her writing desk, correcting copybooks, he was sitting in his room computing assessments of property. The pens were scribbling, the clock was ticking, and the tea-kettle singing. Whenever he looked up from his documents at her sweet face, she raised her eyes, their glances met, and they nodded to each other as if they had been parted for a long time. And they continued working.

But finally he grew tired of his work.

"Talk to me a little," he pleaded.

And she eagerly complied with his request.

"But what do they talk about?"

The scoffer Borg once asked that question, when he declared matrimony to be an impossibility from the point of view of natural science.

He laid down the proposition that the moment must come when every subject had been discussed, when each partner knew every thought and opinion of the other, and when absolute silence was bound to reign.

The fool!

THE END