exchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelmingly
superior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight.
From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks
and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this I
flung him into the ditch like a glove. He sprang up again, but, with
lofty indifference, I threw him a second time, till his head buzzed.
That satisfied me that I had not been shamed before Henrietta, who, for
that matter, took my exploit very coolly and did not fling me so much as
a word for it. However, she asked me if I would meet her the same
evening under the old May-tree. When we met, she had two long straps
with her, and at once asked me, somewhat mockingly and dryly, whether I
had the courage to let myself be bound. Of course I said I had,
whereupon, very carefully and thoroughly, she fastened my hands together
with the one strap. Could I move my arms? No. Then, with eager haste,
she swung the other strap and let it fall on my back. Again and again.

My first smart jacket was a well-thrashed one. She thoroughly enjoyed
exerting her strength. Naturally, my boyish ideas of honour would not
permit me to scream or complain; I merely stared at her with the
profoundest astonishment. She gave me no explanation, released my hands,
we each went our own way, and I avoided her the rest of my stay.

This was my first experience of woman's perfidy.

Still, I did not bear a grudge long, and the evening before I left we
met once again, at her request, and then she gave me the first and only
kiss, neither of us saying anything but the one word, "Good-bye."

I have never seen her since. I heard that she died twenty years ago in
Brazil. But two years after this, when I was feeling my first schoolboy