At last she rose. Her bosom heaved violently, and there was a faint light in the pale cheeks, which seemed to have grown fuller during her prayer.
She looked around the room as if she were taking a silent vow. Then she went into the adjoining room, closed the door after her, stood still a moment as though to accustom herself to the darkness, groped her way to the door which opened on the glass-enclosed veranda, and went out.
It was lighter there. The moon had risen, and shone through the close-packed frozen crystals on the glass; the light came yellowish through the panes, blue and red through the squares of colored glass that framed them.
She melted a hole in the ice with her hand and carefully wiped away the moisture with her handkerchief.
As yet there was no one in sight out on the fjord.
She began to walk up and down in her glass cage. There was no furniture out there except a settee of cane and bent wood, covered with withered ivy leaves from the vines overhead. Every time she passed it, the leaves rustled faintly with the stirring of the air, and now and then her dress caught a leaf on the floor, drawing it along with a scratching sound over the boards.
Back and forth she walked on her dreary watch, her arms folded over her breast, hardening herself against the cold.
He came.
She opened the door with a quick wrench, and stepped out into the frozen snow in her thin shoes. She had no pity on herself, she could have gone bare-footed to that meeting.
Niels had slowed up at the sight of the black figure against the snow and was skating toward land with hesitating, tentative strokes.