. And now it was his turn to weep!

Brita followed him and sat down beside him, she was so happy that
she wanted to shout.

"Ingmar, little Ingmar!" she said, calling him by his pet name.

"But you think I'm so ugly!" he returned.

"Of course I do."

Ingmar pushed her hand away.

"Now let me tell you something," said Brita.

"Tell away."

"Do you remember what you said in court three years ago?"

"I do."

"That if I could only get to think differently of you, you would
marry me?"

"Yes, I remember."

"It was after that I began to care for you. I had never imagined
that any mortal could say such a thing. It seemed almost
unbelievable your saying it to me, after all I had done to you. As
I saw you that day, I thought you better looking than all the
others, and you were wiser than any of them, and the only one with
whom it would be good to share one's life. I fell so deeply in love
with you that it seemed as if you belonged to me, and I to you. At
first I took it for granted that you would come and fetch me, but
later I hardly dared think it."

Ingmar raised his head. "Then why didn't you write?" he asked.

"But I did write."

"Asking me to forgive you, as if that were anything to write
about!"

"What should I have written?"

"About the other thing."

"How would I have dared--I?"

"I came mighty near not coming at all."

"But Ingmar! do you suppose I could have written love letters to
you after all I had done! My last day in prison I wrote to you
because the chaplain said I must. When I gave him the letter, he
promised not to send it until I was well on my way."

Ingmar took her hand and flattened it against the earth, then
slapped it.

"I could beat you!" he said.

"You may do with me what you will, Ingmar."

He looked up into her face, upon which suffering had wrought a new
kind of beauty. "And I came so near letting you go!" he sighed.

"You just had to come, I suppose."

"Let me tell you that I didn't care for you."

"I don't wonder at that."

"I felt relieved when I heard that you were to be sent to America."

"Yes, father wrote me that you were pleased."

"Whenever I looked at mother, I felt somehow that I couldn't ask
her to accept a daughter-in-law like you."

"No, it would never do, Ingmar."

"I've had to put up with a lot on your account; no one would notice
me because of my treatment of you."

"Now you are doing what you threatened to do," said Brita. "You're
strik