"Look here, Ragna, after all, I am your husband, I have my rights and I mean to take them, Intendiamoci, I don't want to hurt you, but if you behave this way, I shall, so make an end of it! And remember this, you owe me a wife's duty in return for all I have done for you!"
With a groan she fell back on her pillows and his lips found hers again.
Thus did Ragna learn the most bitter of all humiliations, and it seemed to her, that night, that her very soul died within her, together with her newborn self-respect. Now indeed was all dust and ashes and gall—all that remained to her was the outward shell of respectability, "And God knows how dearly bought," she moaned into her pillow, as in the grey dawn she lay with aching head and dry painful throat from which rose hard tearless sobs of disgust and despair. Even if Egidio had loved her, she thought, but she knew now that his feeling for her was anything but love; a vile passion brutal and overmastering, a desire that would bite rather than kiss, tear rather than caress, the passion of a beast. And all the tenderness, the consideration, the respect of the past few weeks? Sham, all sham! "Then Virginia was right, this is what she tried to warn me against, and I would not listen!" thought Ragna. "And it is for always, there can be no escape—never until death!" Then she hugged herself in her arms, "Ah, little child, little child of mine, your name is dearly bought." So she lay, crushed and miserable, in the sad dawn, and there rose to her ears the creak and rattle of the axles of the heavy country carts, bringing in fowls and vegetables and hay from the country. One after another they creaked and groaned by, now and then a whip cracked, or a muffled curse rose. Then came the sweepers with the swish of brooms and water and a few early street cries pierced the morning stillness.
And always in after life, these morning sounds, the creaking of the carts, the swish of the brooms, the hawkers' cries, were associated in Ragna's mind, together with the chill and cruel dawn, with a dreary sense of hopelessness, as when the watcher by a sickbed sees, by the first livid streak of light, the ashen grey of death steal over some beloved face, and realizes the despairing cheerlessness of all the long day to follow, of all the cheerless dawns throughout the years.
CHAPTER III
Ragna's letter announcing her marriage reached Fru Boyesen as that lady and Ingeborg were eating their substantial early breakfast. Ingeborg, at her aunt's request, had come to spend some months with her, and though not as dear to the old lady's heart as Ragna, perhaps because the element of pride in an unquestioned intellectual supremacy was lacking, had won a place for herself by her quiet unassuming manners and gentle dependence of spirit.
Fru Boyesen eagerly tore open the envelope with its foreign stamp and post mark, but as she mastered the meaning of the first sentences her hands dropped and she gave a cry of astonishment.
"What is it, Auntie?" asked Ingeborg who had recognised her sister's handwriting.
Fru Boyesen speechlessly waved a hand; she resettled the glasses on her nose and continued her perusal of the letter, growing red in the face as she proceeded. Ingeborg sat watching her with round anxious eyes exercising all her self-control in silencing the queries that crowded to her lips. The thin foreign paper crackled and creased as the pages were turned, and Ingeborg followed the close fine lines of writing, though too far away to distinguish a word. Crushing the letter in her hand Fru Boyesen rose to her feet, upsetting her cup of coffee; Ingeborg sprang forward, but the expression of her aunt's face was such as to drive from her mind the minor importance of the slight mishap, and the creamy liquid streamed unheeded to the floor.