Then she bent over him to look into his face, which had grown thinner and paler during the time that he was away:
“Finn,” she said, “was I not with you ... out there ... when you were travelling?”
Finn smiled and nodded his head:
“You came in your letters,” he said. “That father never did. But you were mostly here at home, where I was longing to be.”
She thought it was strange that he did not take her hand when he said that.
And, suddenly, she became conscious that she was sitting in terror lest he should slip away from her.
What had she to hold him with, if anything seized him that was stronger than their quiet life in these hours ... what had she, if he went...?
It seemed to her as though Cordt stood in the room and beckoned him out into the yellow woods, where the air was so bracing and good. And Finn leapt up with a joyful cry ... they went away ... and never looked back....
She felt that Cordt was stronger than she and hated him for it. She sought for a weapon to defend herself. She wished that Finn, who loved her, would lie down before her, as he so often used to do, with his cheek against her hand. And she knew that he was not thinking of it.
She felt so wretched and so lonely that she grew frightened and called upon her old longing for the red happiness ... if only it would come and take her, so that she might have something to set against him who had everything....