At the age of sixteen, Ralph went to the capital with the intention of entering the Military Academy. He was a tall, handsome youth, slender of stature, and carried himself as erect as a candle. He had a light, clear complexion of almost feminine delicacy; blonde, curly hair, which he always kept carefully brushed; a low forehead, and a straight, finely modeled nose. There was an expression of extreme sensitiveness about the nostrils, and a look of indolence in the dark-blue eyes. But the ensemble of his features was pleasing, his dress irreproachable, and his manners bore no trace of the awkward self-consciousness peculiar to his age. Immediately on his arrival in the capital he hired a suite of rooms in the aristocratic part of the city, and furnished them rather expensively, but in excellent taste. From a bosom friend, whom he met by accident in the restaurant's pavilion in the park, he learned that a pair of antlers, a stuffed eagle, or falcon, and a couple of swords, were indispensable to a well- appointed apartment. He accordingly bought these articles at a curiosity- shop. During the first weeks of his residence in the city he made some feeble efforts to perfect himself in mathematics, in which he suspected he was somewhat deficient. But when the same officious friend laughed at him, and called him "green," he determined to trust to fortune, and henceforth devoted himself the more assiduously to the French ballet, where he had already made some interesting acquaintances.
The time for the examination came; the French ballet did not prove a good preparation; Ralph failed. It quite shook him for the time, and he felt humiliated. He had not the courage to tell his father; so he lingered on from day to day, sat vacantly gazing out of his window, and tried vainly to interest himself in the busy bustle down on the street. It provoked him that everybody else should be so light- hearted, when he was, or at leastfancied himself, in trouble. The parlor grew intolerable; he sought refuge in his bedroom. There he sat one evening (it was the third day after the examination), and stared out upon the gray stone walls which on all sides enclosed the narrow court-yard. The round stupid face of the moon stood tranquilly dozing like a great Limburger cheese suspended under the sky.
Ralph, at least, could think of a no more fitting simile.But the bright-eyed young girl in the window hard by sent a longing look up to the same moon, and thought of her distant home on the fjords, where the glaciers stood like hoary giants, and caught the yellow moonbeams on their glittering shields of snow.She had been reading "Ivanhoe" all the afternoon, until the twilight had overtaken her quite unaware, and now she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to write her German exercise. She lifted her face and saw a pair of sad, vacant eyes, gazing at her from the next window in the angle of the court.She was a little startled at first, but in the next moment she thought of her German exercise and took heart. "Do you know German?" she said; then immediately repented that shehad said it.
"I do," was the answer.
She took up her apron and began to twist it with an air of embarrassment.
"I didn't mean anything," she whispered, at last. "I only wanted to know.""You are very kind."
That answer roused her; he was evidently making sport of her.
"Well, then, if you do, you may write my exercise for me.I have marked the place in the book."And she flung her book over to his window, and he caught it on the edge of the sill, just as it was falling.
"You are a very strange girl," he remarked, turning over the leaves of the book, although it was too dark to read."How old are you?""I shall be fourteen six weeks before Christmas," answered she, frankly.
"Then I excuse you."
"No, indeed," cried she, vehemently."You needn't excuse me at all.
If you don't want to write my exercise, you may send the book back again. I am very sorry I spoke to you, and I shall never do it again.""But you will not get the book back again without the exercise," replied he, quietly."Good-night."The girl stood long looking after him, hoping that he would return. Then, with a great burst of repentance, she hid her face in her lap, and began to cry.
