e, it is not you
alone I mean. Tear out your eyes--no, no, I didn't mean it, Olof! Oh,
I am mad--we are all mad, we have sinned.... Do not hate me, do not
send me away. I am worthless now, I know, but it was you I loved,
Olof, you and no other."

Olof writhed in horror, as if all his past had come upon him suddenly
like a monster, a serpent that was crushing him in its toils.

"No, let me stay a little yet, do not send me away. Only a moment,
Olof, and I will go. No, I will not reproach you--you did not know me
then. And I knew nothing--how should we have known?"

She was silent for a moment, watching his face. Then she went on:

"Tell me one thing--those others--have any of them come to you--since?
Ah, I can see it in your eyes. None who have known you could ever
forget. If only you had been like all the rest--we do not long for
them when they are gone. But you were--you. And a woman must ever come
back to the man that won her _heart_. We may think we hate him, but
it is not true. And when life has had its way with us, and left us
crushed and soiled--then we come back to him, as--how shall I say
it?--as to holy church--no, as pilgrims, penitents, to a shrine ...
come back to look for a moment on all that was pure and good ... to
weep over all that died so soon...."

Her voice broke. She thrust aside the piece of wood he had been
holding all the time, and sent it clattering to the floor; then
grasping his hands, she pressed them to her eyes, and hid her head in
his lap.

Olof felt the room darkening round him. He sat leaning forward, with
his chin on his breast; heavy tears dropped from his eyes like the
dripping of thawed snow from the eaves in spring.

For a long while they sat thus. At last the woman raised her head, and
looked with tear-stained eyes into his.

"Olof, do not be harsh with me. I had to come--had to ease my heart of
all that has weighed it down these years past. I have suffered so.
And when I see you now, I understand you must have your own sorrows
to bear. Forgive me all the cruel things I said. I had to say it all,
that too, or I could not have told you anything; I wanted to cry the
moment I saw you. Your wife--did I say anything? Oh, I do not hate
her, you must not think I hate her. I can't remember what I said. But
I am happier now, easier now that I have seen you."

Her glance strayed from his face, and wandered vaguely into distance,
as if she had been sitting alone in the twilight, dr