Some days after he was allowed to get up, and he followed her about the house; for he was uneasy when she left the room.
At times he sat in a corner with a good book in his hands not so much for the purpose of reading as for a protection against the assaults of Satan.
The fact was, that he now for the first time began to fancy that Satan was everywhere in pursuit of him.
When Sarah had succeeded in frightening him away from her, she became a little less severe, and it was only when he became troublesome that she talked or read in such a manner as almost to drive him out of his senses.
She herself went about in the deepest gloom all this time. She could neither pray nor sing, and at the meetings she heard, but gave no heed.
The one second she had been in Hans Nilsen's arms had suddenly revealed to her the deceit which had been practiced upon her. Her youth, her warm, unbounded affection for this man, had been repressed and crushed by religious exhortations, hymns, texts, and formalities.
But after all, they were only words which she now cast aside with contempt. Faith and hope had left her; and as to love, she knew that she loved one man only, and loved him to desperation.
Whilst Fennefos was away, she was in a state of fever. When he returned, he left her mother's house and moved up to the Haugian farm.
It was near the town, and Sarah, who rarely went beyond the neighbouring streets, now began to take long walks into the outskirts.
She would stand behind a boulder or a hedge, and would watch him while he laboured in the field. When she could not discover him, she would seat herself on a rock and gaze in all directions, or she would pick a flower and examine it, as if it were something new and rare. She watched him at the meetings; but he never spoke to her, nor did he ever turn his eyes in the direction where she was sitting.