she had been so
important, if it was not because Nikolai had lifted his hand against the
Consul-General's Ludvig. Oh yes, he might wonder as much as he liked,
but that was why she had been driven out helpless into the world, from
comfortable circumstances. And then when an opportunity came for Nikolai
to support her a little, he had some one else to spend his money upon.

But the most vexatious part of it was that Nikolai also wanted to forbid
her to apply to one who was as good as her own child, when there was the
necessity for it.

She would pay no attention to that however. If _he_ would not help her,
he must put up with her going to one who could, now that it was a
question of closing the shop and the whole business.

No, she swore she would not go bankrupt. And she struck the table so
that the coppers danced in the drawer.

It was a good thing that it was this week, for next week he was going
abroad for two or three months; he had said so himself yesterday, so
that both she and Silla heard it.

Nikolai sat quite pale. His mouth moved as if it were trembling, and he
wiped his forehead once or twice with his sleeve.

He looked slowly up at his mother; it was as if he were afraid of
getting to hate her.

"You shall have the money."

He felt he was on the point of bursting into tears, and must get away to
have his rage out.

It was another postponement for him and Silla until the spring. And
where was the end of it to be?

His hand shook and fumbled with the door-handle.

This fresh piece of information, which his mother had so unexpectedly
given Nikolai, that it was he who had destroyed her well-being, was like
yet another stone weighing him down.

It crushed him like a moral defeat. He could not rid himself of the
thought that there was something in it. He felt his courage was
weakened, and he went about disheartened.

He had lost another quarter as to his prospects of getting married, and
if his mother required or rather claimed money from him again for her
down-hill trade, what could he do?

It was like work without hope, and despondency began to take hold of
him.

When he put his shillings away in the tin box on Saturday, it was with
bitter thoughts. At any moment his mother might come and swallow the
whole of it--as she, of course, had a right to do, since he in his time
had wasted all hers.

He had always thought that when it came to the point, it was he who had
a reckoning to demand of his