ing me."

"I can't begin to tell you how mad I am at you."

She kept still.

"When I think of all I've had to stand these last few weeks--" he
went on.

"But Ingmar--"

"Oh, I'm not angry about that, but at the thought of how near I
came to letting you go!"

"Didn't you love me, Ingmar?"

"No, indeed."

"Not during the whole journey home?"

"No, not for a second! I was just put out with you."

"When did you change?"

"When I got your letter."

"I saw that your love was over; that was why I did not want you to
know that mine was but just beginning."

Ingmar chuckled.

"What amuses you, Ingmar?"

"I'm thinking of how we sneaked out of church, and of the kind of
welcome we got at the Ingmar Farm."

"And you can laugh at that?"

"Why not as well laugh? I suppose we'll have to take to the road,
like tramps. Wonder what father would say to that?"

"You may laugh, Ingmar, but this can't be; it can't be."

"I think it can, for now I don't care a damn about anything or
anybody but you!"

Brita was ready to cry, but he just made her tell him again and
again how often she had thought of him, and how much she had longed
for him. Little by little he became as quiet as a child listening
to a lullaby. It was all so different from what Brita had expected.
She had thought of talking to him about her crime, if he came for
her, and the weight of it. She would have liked to tell either him
or her mother, or whoever had come for her, how unworthy she was
of them. But not a word of this had she been allowed to speak.

Presently he said very gently:

"There is something you want to tell me?"

"Yes."

"And you are thinking about it all the time?"

"Day and night!"

"And it gets sort of mixed in with everything?"

"That's true."

"Now tell me about it, so there will be two instead of one to bear
it."

He sat looking into her eyes; they were like the eyes of a poor,
hunted fawn. But as she spoke they became calmer.

"Now you feel better," he said when she had finished.

"I feel as if a great weight had been lifted from my heart."

"That is because we are two to bear it. Now, perhaps, you won't
want to go away."

"Indeed I should love to stay!" she said.

"Then let us go home," said Ingmar, rising.

"No, I'm afraid!"

"Mother is not so terrible," lie laughed, "when she sees that one
has a mind of one's own."

"No, Ingmar, I could never turn her out of her home. I have no
choice but to go to A