Although he was just on the verge of learning what he most wished to know, he stopped.
He told her that it was arranged so that Rendalen was to meet Ragni on board; the former was going home for a few days and would take care of her. Then they got up.
Would Kallem not take her to the steamer? He put his arms round her, hid his face on her shoulder and said, he dare not. This was the hardest blow of all. For a while she was quite overcome; then they sat down again and took leave of each other, a long, harrowing farewell. Marie was on thorns. He would have taken her down to the carriage; but Marie forbade it most decidedly; they must not be seen together by anyone.
He heard the carriage drive away, but did not see it, and in all the succeeding years he looked back upon that moment as the most terrible he had ever experienced.
He did not go out to see the steamer sail away in the distance; but in the afternoon he went down to the place where she had lain.
From there he went for a long walk--and timed it so that her aunt should see him. It was part of his plan.
For a time this kept all suspicion away from him. No one could suppose that the person who had arranged Ragni's flight and who was the cause of it, would come to the front so soon.
Everyone who remembers this event, will remember, too, how severely she was condemned. A stranger, shy, and without relations, she had left no remembrance of herself--unless it were of her poetical playing so full of song; and that could not plead for her now. A year ago she had undertaken to live for her dead sister's children; and now she had forsaken them. The blind man whom she had married was her own choice; she had had no difficulties with him.
If she regretted it, why not say so openly? Why behave in that sly, underhand way?
It was hard for Kallem to listen to all this; had he ruined her reputation? Already everyone took it for granted that she had had a "liaison" with someone; and the hour was not far distant when it would be asserted that he was the guilty one.