“Oh!” he cried suddenly, starting up, “this is too much, Karen! I can’t bear it; you must help me!”
“I think you ought to help me,” she replied monotonously, without looking at him.
Later in the day he came in and found her again sitting and gazing straight before her, motionless and far away, although their youngest child was standing crying and pulling at her skirts. And when she fixed her eyes upon him he started involuntarily. He did not know whether her gaze was full of terror of him, or whether it was hatred.
“Now she thinks this is my fault, and she’ll say so soon!” he thought; and although he knew it was true, he felt a desire to oppose and keep her at a distance. “As if I hadn’t enough to bear already!” he thought. “And she wants to throw this upon me!” And he worked himself up to still greater irritation against her, as if this new misfortune had been in some way or other due to her.
They went about in fear of one another, each keeping silence from a suspicion that the other was ready to recriminate. They had been torn from the home in which they had passed happy years, and the discomfort and poverty of the miserable cottage only helped to remind them of their misfortune and keep them apart.
While Fru Wangen was standing in the kitchen making some soup for the children, she suddenly sank into a chair and stared into the fire with terrified eyes, for her father, as he hung there, said that he did not mind about Wangen. It was only she he troubled about, she who had brought him into the family.
It was she! It was she!
The soup boiled over, and Fru Wangen did not notice it. The floor seemed to be sliding away from under her, and she thought that something black stretched out hands towards her until she turned cold with terror, and began involuntarily to look for something to save her.
It was the bankruptcy that had ruined them all. But supposing that Wangen were really innocent? Then her father might have made his speech to those who were guilty. She also now saw in Wangen’s innocence a plank to which she could cling. He was innocent; he must be innocent.
Later in the day Wangen had gone to her father’s farm, as she did not feel equal to it; but he turned back, too, when he saw the house. He dared not see the dead man.