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Bloom recalled a story which he had once read in a school book about an ugly duckling that was transformed into a swan. He sought for an application of this to himself and partly found it in his recent transformation at the barber shop and the photographer’s, but it did not seem to him fully satisfactory, and he muttered to himself as he passed on over the bridge: “Wait, I’ll show them! Just wait.”

It was very warm, and when he came to the other side of the bridge where nettles and burdocks were standing, gray with dust, by the edge of the road, he took off his jacket, stuck the crook of his stick through the loop, slung it over his shoulder, and went on out along the Lilyholm Road whistling a cheerful tune.

A little in front of him went a young woman with a bundle in her hand, and he hurried his steps so as to see how she looked from in front. As he came nearer, all at once his heart nearly stood still in his breast, for he thought it must be Edith. At the same moment she turned.

“No, if it isn’t Valdemar!”