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‘God, it’s hot,’ she gasps. ‘How can you sit here?’

Veronica throws a scoop of water onto the stones. There’s a loud hiss and hot clouds of steam rise up and surround them for a few seconds. Then the heat becomes dry and static again.

Reidar is hanging forward over his knees. The hair on his head is so hot he almost scalds himself when he runs his hand through it.

‘No, that’s enough,’ he gasps, and climbs down.

The two women follow him out into the soft snow. Dusk is spreading its darkness across the snow, which is already glowing pale blue.

Heavy snowflakes drift down as the three naked people pound through the deep snow.

David, Wille and Berzelius are eating dinner with the other members of the Sanctum scholarship committee, and the drinking songs can be heard all the way out to the back of the garden.

Reidar turns and looks at Veronica and Marie. Steam is rising from their flushed bodies, they’re enveloped in veils of mist as the snow falls around them. He is about to say something when Veronica bends over and throws an armful of snow up at him. He backs away, laughing, and falls onto his back, vanishing under the loose snow.