At last, slowly and cautiously, came Anna's question, "Why did Herr Rendalen go?"
"Heaven knows!" She sighed, looked towards the door where he had disappeared, got up, and left the room.
Karl Vangen was talking to Tora; he now saw that Anna was disengaged, and came up to her to say that he had been "very much delighted" with some of the quotations; he knew the book. Karl Vangen had been on the high road to become a fashionable preacher; happily he had escaped, but the terror still remained with him. Anna knew this from her aunts, so she had the secret key to his remarks. He believed entirely in woman's religious convictions, he said, and did not quite agree with her.
She asked him his opinion in other respects. "I know so little about women in other ways," he said, colouring slightly, "I dare not enter into it."
As soon as ever the elders were gone, the enthusiasm of the girls broke out. "Little Anna" was the eldest of them, a thing people very easily forgot--she was so undeveloped in appearance. They had never thought her capable of such an effort. "What a remarkable point of view! how well expressed! and that by one of ourselves."
Nora and Tora were especially charmed. "That is just what we are, just as untruthful, principally in little things of course. And how we play with serious questions. We must have deeds as well, or if not deeds, then----"
"Snuff," said somebody, and the whole party burst into roars of laughter, but they began again: "It is true, Heaven knows it is true. It must be altered; it is shameful to be as we are."
As a beginning they would all escort Anna home. Yes, they would! And so they did, and the two crooked old aunts were startled out of their sleep when, between eleven and twelve at night, they heard the swarm buzzing before the house, and the call of "Good-night, good-night, good-night," from twenty ringing girls' voices. And little Anna herself! She had to go in and tell them what it was all about, but she merely said they had come home with her. She could not say more just then. She felt so uncertain. She had written this lecture with her heart's blood; she had turned her bitterest feelings into an assault; she had felt certain that she would be assailed for it, hated for it, and lo and behold, she had been thanked for it over and over again; nothing had been heard but exultation and praise.
She lay in bed, but could not sleep. Was it from pleasure? Was it from fear? Or had she been for the first time moved by them? It was not disagreeable.
At the same time more than one little head lay pondering what course should be pursued. The impulse to take this seriously, to be terribly truthful, must have nourishment, otherwise it would certainly die. And they found something real to do!