“It’ll keep till this evening, won’t it?” she said. “I shall be late if I stay behind now.”
“‘Seek first the kingdom of God and righteousness....’”
“Ha!” A single sound, like the scream of a cockerel, escaped from Hedvig. It was the first time she had openly derided her father’s godliness. She regretted it bitterly next moment. True, the door out to the alley-way was open, just at her left, but what was the good of escaping herself when her mother was left behind to face what would come? She knew what it was to come home in high spirits from her work, and find her mother weeping, perhaps bruised into the bargain. She had no wish to experience that again.
The tears were gathering already; something was choking her.
Egholm set his hands on the arms of his chair, to spring up and dash out into the kitchen, but his anger seemed to snap in the middle.
In a sudden glimpse of vision he saw Hedvig in a new light. The slip of a girl, whose naughtinesses he had been at such pains to weed out, was no longer a slip of a girl and merely naughty—she was a sinner.
Every line of her figure, every feature in her face spoke blasphemy. She stood there with the challenge of an idol.
With a strangely sweet horror her father noted all: her guilty mouth, half-open, with lips pale and narrow, yet fresh, and teeth white as almonds, whence issued that hell-born defiance. Her blood must be evil as smoking brimstone.
Egholm sank back powerless in his chair.
But a moment later a new feeling came over him. How great a thing would it be to bring this child of sin to God, with bowed head and folded hands. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than of the ninety and nine which need no repentance.” So the Scripture said. Hedvig would be a heavenly subject for conversion.