another
page, a loose one, on which was written in red ink: "Read this when you
are alone."

"I have decided, Ragni," Karl wrote, "that it would be wisest to tell
you why I left so suddenly. Someone has started a dreadful slander
against us. If I do not now tell you, you will hear it from the lips of
some enemy. Ah, God! that I should have brought this upon you! Love you?
Of course I love you. How could I help doing so, after all your kindness
to me? And as for Edward, I worship the ground he treads on. He is the
noblest man I have ever met. But do not show him this letter. Spare him
the evil news as long as possible. Now that I have gone away, it may all
blow over."

Kallem did not get home from the hospital that night until eight
o'clock. When he came home his wife was lying in bed with a headache.
She did not get up the next morning. She was in bed several days. When
at last she got up, her husband noticed that she had grown very thin;
her face had a tired, delicate expression; there were dark rings around
her sweet eyes, and she was troubled with a cough.

_III.--The Fell Work of Slander_

Ragni now did not stir outside her own door. She longed for fresh air,
but she would not go out into the town for fear of the cruel, curious
eyes of the scandal-mongers. Soeren Kule haunted her. His house
overlooked her garden, and she got the strange fancy into her head that
he was always sitting at the window blindly listening for her. So she
never even went for a walk in the park-like grounds which Kallem had
purchased wholly for her pleasure.

The poison of scandal had done its work. Her husband, unfortunately,
never suspected that she was really ill; he had a deep longing for a
child of his marriage, and, misled by too eager a hope, he
misinterpreted the strange alteration in his wife's health.

But one evening, when she coughed, some blood came up. Kallem saw it,
and the hideous truth came upon him in a blinding flash. It was the
terrible disease which he had spent the greater part of his fortune in
fighting against. Tuberculosis! But how was it that it had come so
suddenly, and ravaged her dear, sweet, tender body so furiously? She was
in a galloping consumption, and the end was not far off ... a few
weeks ... a few days, perhaps.

"Darling," he said, coming to her bedside one day, "isn't there some
secret you would like to confide in me--some secret that has been
hurting and distressing you? Tell me, dearest,