And nothing more. We parted.

Later in the afternoon, as dusk fell, when the lamps were lit and shop windows shone, he walked for half an hour on West Main Street, upper sisters and school girls rendezvous.

He went there now with the full right: he was self-collegians.

He looked at the girl’s sunburned faces and the sea baths bleached tresses. Now and then he greeted. There was Martha Gyllencrantz and Anna Keen Sterne and Ebba Bo berg … the whole line. As collegians they went in pairs or three in points. The two sexes had not yet had time to mix with each other. It was the season’s first day. But it was met with quick glance, which seemed to ask: Have you been fancier from last semester? Is it you I’m going to rave about this fall in the absence of the real, the unknown, she is now going somewhere on a street in a city far, far away?

He also met Rose. Her skin was not tanned like the others, although he was sure that she has been in the country. She belonged to the upper class, for anyone who is not in town during the summer. Her father was for the rest already tycoon in society. Reluctantly they had been compelled to give him space and allow him, until he proved indispensable.

Rose was told not tanned like the others. She was a Southern child and her skin demanded hotter rays. But instead, he noticed something in her that made his heart beat and also aroused in him a feeling at once heady and disagreeable. She had breasts like a grown woman. Her blouse was plump and round over the bust. It was as if all the summer sun with her focused on this limb.

He felt confused and blushed slightly as he took off his cap and saluted. She was content not to respond with a jerk of his head like the other girls. She stopped and said: – Good day, Stellan, how are you, have you had enlivened the summer, I have had so rolit, you should believe and now I travel to Stockholm to begin my musical studies in earnest.