It is her instinct.




XVII


Dear me, these human beings grow duller every day, and I see nothing in
them that I have not known before. So I sink to the level of watching
Solem's increasing passion for Miss Torsen. But that too is familiar and
dull.

Solem, after all the attention the ladies have paid him, has a delusion of
greatness; he buys clothes and gilt watch chains for the money he earns,
and on Sundays wears a white woolen pullover, though it is very warm;
round his neck and over his chest lies a costly silk tie tied in a
sailor's knot. No one else is so smart as he, as he well knows; he sings
as he crosses the farmyard, and considers no one too good for him now.
Josephine objects to his loud singing, but Solem lad has grown so
indispensable at the resort that he no longer obeys all orders. He has his
own will in many things, and sometimes Paul himself takes a glass in his
company.

Miss Torsen appears to have settled down. She is very busy with the
lawyer, and makes him explain each and every angle he draws in his plans.
Quite right of her, too, for undeniably the lawyer is the right man for
her, a wit and a sportsman, well-to-do, rather simple-minded,
strong-necked. At first Mrs. Molie seemed unable to reconcile herself to
the constant companionship of these two in the living room, and she