"Did you know her father?" asked Meek, Kallem shuddered.
"Did you?"
"Yes, I was doctor to the fisheries up there."
"Was he--?" Kallem asked breathlessly and unable to finish his sentence. Meek merely nodded, Kallem clasped his head with both hands, hurried to the door, came back again: "You will examine her now, here, at once?"
Kallem led her in tenderly, without giving her time to take off her apron; and carefully brought her up close to the windows. Evidently she had been crying--and those rings under her eyes, her thinness, her colour! She saw his alarm but mistook the cause. Out in the kitchen she had been thinking; now they must be talking about Karl; now Kallem will hear why it is I get no more letters from him. And now that she saw Kallem's agitation she thought, can he be angry because I did not tell him? She could not bear the idea of that, it made her hot and cold by turns.
"Ragni, darling, Dr. Meek would like to sound your chest."
Was that what it was! She was much alarmed, she looked at him with imploring eyes like a stricken deer, begging to be spared. But again he entreated her and began carefully taking off her big apron; submissive as she was she gave herself up to them.
Kallem guessed at once, by the other's manner, by his stopping and then listening again that something terrible was coming. Her startled eyes sought her husband's, and increased his suffering--did she suspect anything herself? Or was she reproaching him for letting anyone but him do this?
Now the doctor's great head was pressed to her back. At the right side, what was it?... a thickening of the tip of the lung? or the tissues? He imagined the worst, and she did the same; he could see that. Could it be that she knew more than she would acknowledge? Concealed something just as he concealed his fears?... Good God, such sorrowfully beseeching eyes were never seen, save only when the fear of death was in them. He was seized with it himself.
"Have you been coughing more than usual lately?" She seemed uncertain as to what she should answer and looked imploringly at Kallem. Her hands were trembling and she tried to hide it; Meek noticed it! "Do you get very tired when you are out walking?" he asked. Again she looked at Kallem in despair, as though she ought to beg his pardon for it. "Do you become breathless quickly?" continued the other.