"I think you had better stop in bed, and I shall come again to-morrow. I will tell Fru Bjork that you are not to talk or be disturbed." He took her hand and stroked it gently. "Don't worry and reproach yourself, my child; regretting the past will undo none of the mischief, one must go forward and face the future. Looking backward never does any good; if all the strength wasted in repentance and vain regrets were turned into a wholesome resolve to make the future better than the past! Ah, my dear, the Church has much to be responsible for, in fostering introspection and useless repentance as virtues! Virtues indeed! they sap the strength and muddle the brain, and make one weak and mawkish! Face the future, and make the best of it, that is the true morality!" He smiled whimsically down at the girl. "See how my tongue runs away with me, when I mount one of my hobbies! We shall have long discussions in future, you and I,—and I think you will find that life is not such a bad affair after all!"
He left Ragna much benefited by his cheery optimism, and kindly manner.
"At least I have one real friend," she thought, and then her mind turned to Angelescu. He had meant well by her, he had tried to help her,—would he, if he could have foreseen all? His earnest face with the serious steadfast eyes rose before her mental vision, and she knew that nothing would have made any difference to him. The impulse seized her to write to him, to recall him—but no, that was impossible, she had refused his offer twice, and so decisively that reconsideration was impossible, even if present circumstances had not precluded such a thought. No, as she had made her bed, so must she lie in it. She fell into a state of self-pity, in which she saw herself the victim of adverse circumstance, about to be crushed by the juggernaut-car of fatality, broken and cast out! The flagrant injustice that she alone should suffer the penalty, while Mirko went scot free, seared her soul, but it caused her, nevertheless, a sort of pride. Her sufferings made him appear but a poor creature in his careless detachment from moral responsibility, and in the abstract, the idea of shouldering the whole of the burthen alone, gave her an odd sense of exhilaration. She said defiantly to herself:
"God has denied me the common joys of women. He has chosen me to wreak His vengeance upon; my lover has forsaken me, and mocked me, what matter? I will take up the load he has shirked. I will rise above the condemnation of society. I will prove myself mistress of my fate."
With this, calm came upon her, and she fell asleep.
Fortune favoured Ragna, or at least had for her that ambiguous smile, which for the time being, promises a smoothing of the way, but which, retrospectively, seems but an ironic mask. "Here is the way open before you," says Fate; but the path leads but to the deeper intricacies of the labyrinth, from which we would fain escape.
Fru Bjork received a telegram, announcing the illness of Astrid's fiancé, and requesting their instant return.
Ragna was still in bed with a low fever, brought on by the shock and subsequent extreme nervous tension, resulting from her terrible discovery. Fru Bjork, poor woman, was in a quandary; she felt that she must take Astrid back to Christiania, while Dr. Ferrati positively forbade Ragna's undertaking the journey in her weak state of health, and gave his opinion, moreover, that several weeks must elapse before she might contemplate it. The good lady worried, and lost sleep at night, her fat rosy cheeks drooped in anxious curves, and her cap sat perpetually awry on her grey hair. She vacillated hopelessly, without arriving at any decision,—should she and Astrid stop on with Ragna, or should she bundle Ragna off with them, in defiance of Dr. Ferrati's orders? Astrid grew pale, and talked of setting off alone.
At this juncture, the Signora Ferrati stepped in, offering to receive Ragna into her care, and take her back to Florence, where she should remain under the Doctor's eye until he should declare her fit to travel. Fru Bjork, although loath to leave the girl, finally agreed to the arrangement,—indeed, there was nothing else to be done,—and with a heavy heart, set about her preparations for the return journey.
"I don't like it," she kept repeating to Astrid. "I don't like it at all. Something tells me that I should not leave Ragna behind. How shall I explain it to Gitta Boyesen?"