"You may if you like!"
So after a time Rönnaug set forth for Synstevold. She knew very well that Skarlie could offer nothing that would tempt Magnhild, but he might be annoying, perhaps rough. The fore-wheel was a warning.
There was perhaps no one to whom Skarlie was so repulsive as to Rönnaug. She knew him well. No one besides Rönnaug could surmise how he had striven, dastard as he was, to taint the purity of Magnhild's imagination, to deaden her high sense of honor. Magnhild's frequent blushes had their history.
What was it that so bound him to her? At the outset, of course, the hope that failed. But since then? The evening before, when the conversation had turned on the Catholic cloisters, the priest had remarked that Skarlie—who was a man that had traveled and thought considerably—had said that in the cloisters the monks prayed night and day to make amends for the neglected prayers of the rest of the people. That was the reason why people were willing to give their money so freely to the cloisters: it was like making a cash payment on the debt of sin.
Rönnaug had sat and pondered. Had not Skarlie hereby explained his own relations with Magnhild? It was his way of making payments on his debt of sin.
And so, of course, he grudged giving her up.
Had he but been harsh and impatient, Magnhild would immediately have left him. That was just the misfortune; he was a coward, and he could not bear to renounce her. He was very humble whenever he failed in his attempts to win her, and when he had been especially malicious he forthwith made amends by being as friendly and interesting as possible. And this was what had kept the ball rolling.
Amid these and similar reflections, Rönnaug took the way across the fields in order not to be seen from the place. The grass where she walked had not been mown; she trampled it mercilessly under foot, but she paused before a patch of flowers whose varied hues and leaves she could not help contemplating. Suddenly she heard voices. In front of her there were several willow copses through whose branches she espied the pair she was seeking.
There sat Skarlie and Magnhild in the grass, he in his shirt-sleeves and without a hat.
Half-frightened for Magnhild and utterly without respect for him, Rönnaug immediately stood guard. Concealing herself from view she took her post between two copses. Skarlie and Magnhild could be seen quite distinctly, for the space behind them was open.