"Do you know her, then?"
"Yes; she is my wife."
"Your wife? Are you a married man?"
He said this with such a loud voice that both the ladies looked up. In went his head into the room; but nothing but vacant air met him there; the doctor's head was still outside. It was from out there the answer came. "I have been married for six years."
"For six years?" Out popped the minister's head again and stared at Kallem with the greatest astonishment. Six years, he thought. "How long ago is it since?... My dear fellow, it is scarcely six years since?..."
The ladies were now close by; the strange lady walking by the furthest hedge, while Josephine and the boy had crossed over to the other side. "I say, mother, why do little boys fall and knock their heads?" No answer. "I say mother, why don't they fall on their legs?" No answer. "Because the upper part of the body is heaviest, my boy!" It was Kallem who said that. They all three looked up.
He left the window to go and meet them, the minister followed after; but he stopped at the bottom step.
The strange lady's eyes were full of tears when Kallem joined them; in vain she tried to hide it by looking about her on all sides. Josephine was cold and stiff. Little Edward ran up to his father and told him how Nicholas Andersen had climbed up the "ladder" (the boy pointed down to the new house) and "then fallen down." And "the new lady" had tied up his head with her handkerchief. This did not seem to interest the minister as much as the boy expected, so he ran round the house and in to tell his grandmother all about it.
"I suppose I need not introduce her?" said Edward Kallem, with his hand in his wife's and looking at the minister. The latter tried to find something to say, but failed and glanced over at Josephine, who did not look as if she were willing to help him.
It was hardly a week ago since the zealous minister had written condemning the numerous divorces that occurred, followed by fresh marriages; it was an article in the Morgenblad entitled "Marriage or Free-love?" And he had shown, by the most convincing proofs, that, according to the Scripture, the only ground for divorce was infidelity between man and wife. Whatever man could convict his wife of adultery, was free and could marry again; but if any man divorced his wife for other reasons and got married again during her lifetime, then the first marriage was valid and not the other one. Hardly a week ago he had written all this, and with the full consent of his wife. And just because this case of Kallem and Ragni Kule was still so fresh in his memory, he had written how the wife of a sick man had grown weary of the path in life chosen for her by God, and had had secret love-dealings with another man; but as soon as it was discovered, she had left him and got a divorce. Supposing, he wrote, that that woman were to marry the man who had aided her in deceiving her husband? who could call such a marriage as that aught but continued adultery?