whispered, the
sparrows chirped, the wooden shoes clattered: "He has run away. The
old shoemaker has run away. The owner of the little house, the
young wife's husband, the father of the beautiful child, he has
run away. Who can understand it? who can explain it?"

There is an old song: "Old husband in the cottage; young lover in
the wood; wife, who runs away, child who cries; home without a
mistress." The song is old. It is often sung. Everybody understands it.

This was a new song. The old man was gone. On the workshop table
lay his explanation, that he never meant to come back. Beside it a
letter had also lain. The wife had read it, but no one else.

The young wife was in the kitchen. She was doing nothing. The
neighbors went backwards and forwards, arranging busily, set out
the cups, made up the fire, boiled the coffee, wept a little and
wiped away the tears with the dish-towel.

The good women of the quarter sat stiffly about the walls. They
knew what was suitable in a house of mourning. They kept silent by
force, mourned by force. They celebrated their holiday by
supporting the forsaken wife in her grief. Coarse hands lay quiet
in their laps, weather-beaten skin lay in deep wrinkles, thin lips
were pressed together over toothless jaws.

The wife sat among the bronze-hued women, gently blonde, with a
sweet face like a dove. She did not weep, but she trembled. She was
so afraid, that the fear was almost killing her. She bit her teeth
together, so that no one should hear how they chattered. When steps
were heard, when the clattering sounded, when some one spoke to
her, she started up.

She sat with her husband's letter in her pocket. She thought of now
one line in it and now another. There stood: "I can bear no longer
to see you both." And in another place: "I know now that you and
Erikson mean to elope." And again: "You shall not do that, for
people's evil talk would make you unhappy. I shall disappear, so
that you can get a divorce and be properly married. Erikson is a
good workman and can support you well." Then farther down: "Let
people say what they will about me. I am content if only they do
not think any evil of you, for you could not bear it."

She did not understand it. She had not meant to deceive him. Even
if she had liked to chat with the young apprentice, what had her
husband to do with that? Love is an illness, but it is not mortal.
She had meant to bear it through life with patience. How had h