[Subsection]

Throughout the spring he and Åsne spoke very little to each other. Sometimes he dreamed senseless things about her.

He could not look her straight in the eyes. When she turned   [p. 99]   up her sleeves to write dictation, he felt hot and strange. Why did she do that? None of the others had turned up their sleeves until now, when they began aping her. Nor did any of them besides himself seem to notice that she did so.

All the others looked at her openly and talked to her and quarrelled with her---as if she were an ordinary girl. The biggest and strongest girl. Not even Olav noticed that she was quite different from before. It was incredible.

Then he realized that he did not think the way the others did when they were with girls. He brooded, ashamed, and hid it away.

One day just before school broke up, a girl stood looking him straight in the eyes. It was Signe Moen. She simply studied him with her clear eyes. He knew that Åsne and Signe were together most of the time. Girls always kept together. Signe was looking at him as if trying to find out something. She must have been doing it for Åsne. She had noticed something and wanted to know more about it.

He could not shake off those cold, searching eyes for several days. What did she want to find out? It had to do with Åsne. Everything had to do with Åsne Bakken now. But the fact that it was so must be hidden, or dreadful things might happen.

It was the spring thaw, and there were light evenings and a tall, tall sky. Per went about staring. He had a stone in his breast. On the day of the examination it rained: strange, spring rain; tender, impossible spring rain and the smell of all that was to be throughout the length and breadth of the country. In the afternoon when everything was over, Åsne Bakken and Signe Moen went home along with the others. Past Per they walked, in the middle of the crowd, and he stood waiting for a voice to call out his innermost secrets all over the school yard---and for the heavens to fall afterwards.

The voice did not speak. He was saved. Åsne and Signe went on. They disappeared behind some dripping black birches. It went on raining, cool and fresh. Gray snowdrifts sighed and received the rain.

Far, far away there was something. Hopelessly far away. It was in today's rain, and in the black earth beside the wet snow, and in the concluding Our Father that had been read slowly and solemnly today, and in Åsne Bakken's eyes, and in the yawning emptiness after Botolv; it swirled around confusedly and was nameless.

Olav Bringa was standing in front of him, looking sideways past him.

"'Bye. See you."

"'Bye."

"Are you herding the sheep this spring?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Yes."

Olav went home. He too disappeared behind the wet birches; he came to school the same way as Åsne and Signe. Nobody else came to him to say good-bye, nor did Per go over to anyone and say it. He went home to Bufast, with his worn books and his pencil-box hidden under his jacket because of the rain.