She had learned of the burial of her child some time before.
And she fell to crying softly at the thought.
Old Kata came to the bedside and stroked her hand.
“All’s in God’s hand,” she said. “And all for the best.”
CHAPTER VI
When Alma rose from her bed after six weeks’ illness, she was but a shadow of her former self. Her face was pale, with a yellow tinge, and her figure wasted to a degree painful to see. She was hardly more than a skeleton. Her dark eyes seemed larger, and glowed with a strange, hard light, such as is seen in the still-open eyes of one frozen to death. Her brown hair no longer stood in a luxuriant cluster round her head; much of it had fallen out, leaving hardly enough to cover the scalp and make a pitiful little knot at the back.
She had seen but little of her husband during her illness. Twice daily he had paid her a brief, formal visit; but only a few words were exchanged between them, and neither found any pleasure in seeing the other. He slept in a different part of the house, and they avoided each other as far as possible.
Ketill could not help noticing that his wife shunned him, but, occupied as he was with his own affairs, it affected him hardly at all.
Alma went about the house quietly, as she had always done, with a smile and a kindly word for all. But though none seemed to notice any change in her manner, her greetings were less heartily felt than before. Her heart was dead within her, and something was straining, straining to an intolerable tension, until it seemed impossible to last. Something must happen soon.
She often went out to the little mound where her child lay buried, and would stand for hours looking down at it. Strange, to have a part of oneself lying there under the frozen earth and yet to go about oneself with the warm blood pulsing in one’s veins. It seemed unreal, yet it was reality. Life seemed to have changed altogether.