She looked round to see Jörgen. He dared not hurry, for the sake of appearances.
"But we two dare, don't we?" Again she clapped her hands and ran, and the dog ran with her, barking.
Then she slackened her pace, and played with him and talked to him; Jörgen was so far behind. "You ought to be called 'liberator'; but that is too long a name for a little black puppy. You shall be called John—be named after him who looked at me and gave me courage." Off she and the dog ran again. "You follow me and not him! Well done, well done! That is what he whom you are called after did. He would have nothing to do with the slave-drivers; his friends were those who set free!"
Now they were round the corner. Jörgen was not visible. When he came to the hotel, he was told, though he had seen Mary go in, that she was not at home. He said that she had his dog. The waiter professed ignorance. There was nothing for it but to go. He had lost both her and the dog.
Up in her room Mary asked the dog: "Will you be mine? Will you go with me, little black John?" She clapped her hands to make him bark his joyful: Yes. The question of ownership was settled thus. A letter which came from Jörgen, probably on this subject, she burned unread.
She expected him to appear at the station, at the time when the train for Norway left, to claim his property. She drove boldly up with her dog at her side, washed, combed, perfumed. Jörgen was not there.
Mary slept all night with the dog at her feet, on her travelling rug.
But with morning came reflection. Now she was alone, alone with the responsibility.
Hitherto she had been forcing herself into the one narrow way of escape—to marry Jörgen at once, bear her child abroad, and after that—endure as long as she could.