"And don't you know what X—— is?"
"No!"
"It is simply a lunatic asylum; the inhabitants make a living by taking care of mad people." And he laughed.
The Norwegian inquired no further, but he asked himself: "Have they enticed me into a trap in order to watch me?"
He had grounds for such a suspicion, for such an occurrence had already happened in his life.
His whole existence now became a single effort to show himself so ordinary in his way of thinking and normal in his behaviour, that nothing "unusual" might be noticed in him. He did not dare to give vent to an original thought or to utter a paradox, and whenever the temptation came to narrate something of his wedding journey he pinched his knee.
This continual fear of being watched depressed him so much that he saw watching eyes everywhere, and thought he noticed traps laid for him in questions where there were none. Sensitive as he was, he believed that the whole village exhaled the contagious atmosphere of the lunatics; he became depressed and feared to go mad himself. But he did not attempt to go away, partly because he feared being arrested at the station, and partly because he had told his wife to meet him at this village.
He had received letters from Arreskov, in which his mother-in-law informed him what disquiet and anxiety his disappearance had caused them. His father-in-law, who well knew what he would have done in the unfortunate man's place, had immediately foreboded his suicide and wept aloud. They had searched for him by the banks of the lake and in the wood.... He stopped reading the letter and felt his conscience prick him. The good old man had wept! How terrible his lot must be, when the sight of it had that effect on others! The letter went on to say that Maria had arrived, and that they would soon meet again, if he only kept quiet, for she loved him. This was a ray of light and it gave him strength to endure this hell, where everyone looked askance at his neighbour to see whether he were in his senses.
But the two last days brought new tortures. The Swede whom he had met in the Copenhagen café had accepted an invitation to come to dinner. The Norwegian went gladly to the station to meet his best friend, who understood him better than anyone else, and who, though poor himself, had tried to make interest for him with rich people, and to procure the help for him which he himself could not obtain. But now he met a stranger who looked at him coldly and treated him as a stranger. There was no smile of recognition on his part, no inquiry after the Norwegian's health and especially no allusion to the past.
After dinner he took the host aside and asked: "Is the Swede angry with me?"