“Sigrid,” he said passionately, “you are not going to let this come between us? You know that I love you with all my heart, you know that I would do anything in the world for you, but even for love of you I cannot make myself believe that black is white.”
“I am not reproaching you because you do not think as we think,” she said quickly. “But in one way this must come between us.”
“Hush!” he said imploringly; “wait a little longer. I will not to-day ask you for your answer; I will wait as long as you please; but don’t speak now while your mind is full of this trouble.”
“If I do not speak now, when do you think I shall be more at leisure?” she asked coldly. “Oh! it seems a light thing to you, and you are kind, and pass it over, and hush it up, but you don’t realize how bitter it is to a Norwegian to have such a shadow cast on his honesty. Do you think that even if you forget it we can forget? Do you think that the other men in the shop hold your view? Do you think that Mr. Horner agrees with you?”
“Perhaps not. What do I care for them?” said Roy.
“No; that is just it. To you it is a matter of indifference, but to Frithiof it is just a daily torture. And you would have me think of happiness while he is miserable! You would have me go and leave him when at any moment he may break down again!”
“I would never ask you to leave him,” said Roy. “Our marriage would not at all involve that. It would be a proof to him of how little this wretched business affects my opinion of him; it would prove to all the world that we don’t regard it as anything but the merest accident.”
“Do you think the world would be convinced?” said Sigrid, very bitterly. “I will tell you what it would say. It would say that I had so entangled you that you could not free yourself, and that, in spite of Frithiof’s disgrace, you were obliged to marry me. And that shall never be said.”
“For heaven’s sake don’t let the miserable gossip, the worthless opinion of outsiders, make our lives miserable. What do we care for the world? It is nothing to us. Let them say what they will; so long as they only say lies what difference does it make to us?”
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, and for the first time the tears rushed to her eyes. “Your life has been all sheltered and happy. But out there in Bergen I have had to bear coldness and contempt and the knowledge that even death did not shield my father from the poisonous tongues of the slanderers. Lies can’t make the things they say true, but do you think that lies have no power to harm you? no power to torture you? Oh! before you say that you should just try.”