What was the meaning of this?
A quarter of an hour later Tuft was on his way past the church; he, too, rather ran than walked. He was the only guilty one; long ago it was he who had given Josephine to understand that Ragni had been unfaithful to her first husband, and had thereby started everything that had since happened! And unless it had been that he was jealous of his brother-in-law, he would hardly have taken their breach with the church, their intercourse with scoffers, as sufficient reason for keeping away and avoiding them. Even if his brother-in-law were to answer that Josephine was not sufficiently a Christian to join in persecuting Ragni on that account; nor could she for that reason at once think the worst of a freethinker, then Tuft would answer that it is not true Christians who do such things, but only those who are half-Christians. That man whose love for God has become the law of his life never judges; but so much the more eagerly do the others do it. Josephine had been so situated that she could not become more than a half-Christian; these theological studies stop a man's growth.
How clearly he saw it all now! He could not bear, therefore, to think of her in her soul's distress; he ran so fast that he arrived panting through the park, the yard, and up on to the steps. The front door was locked--was it not more than ten o'clock? He rang, and rang again, heard steps in the passage, it was the step of a man, Kallem himself opened the door.
"Is Josephine not here?"
"No."
"Has she not been here?"
"Yes, about an hour and a half ago."
"Well?"
"I forbade her to enter."
"You did not even speak to her?"