“Well, in the way of politeness, as you might say, he certainly is,” said Fru Hermansen warmly.
“Puh! When there’s anyone about, yes,” said Fru Egholm. She was not in the humour for praising her husband just now. “But what’s he like at home? Ah—that’s where you get to know people’s hearts!”
And before she knew it, she had lifted the roof off their entire abode, making plain to her visitor that which had formerly been shrouded in darkness.
It was not a little.
Madam Hermansen was simply speechless when Fru Egholm showed her, with tears, the scars under her eyes and the little spot by the temple where the hair was gone.
“I can’t understand you staying another day,” she said, when the sufferer stuck fast in a sob.
“Oh, you mustn’t talk like that. When you’ve vowed before the altar....”
“Did he vow before the altar to knock you about like that, eh? Did he say anything about that?”
“No—o.” Fru Egholm laughed through her tears, anxious to bring her visitor to a gentler frame of mind. “No, and it would be no more than his deserts if I said I wouldn’t live with him any more. But I can’t help it; it’s not in my nature to do it. And, after all, it’s his business how he treats his wife, isn’t it? What’s it to do with me? I couldn’t think of living anywhere but where he is. Love’s not a thing you can pull up by the roots all of a sudden.
“‘When first the flame of love warms human heart, they little know
What harm they do beyond repair who make it cease to glow!’”