"Pull—tear—drag the clothes off my back!"
"There, have a little common-sense, lass!" said one of the constables.
"You mustn't take him! You sha'n't take him!"
She wrenched and pulled at his handcuffs.
"It's my fault! Can't you tell them so, Nikolai?" she cried piercingly, and the policemen took the opportunity to detach her hands.
The sledge dashed off, and Silla, without a shawl, after it, followed by a swarm of boys.
She saw the door of the police-station open for Nikolai without being able to reach him or hinder it; hour after hour she passed outside, listening and waiting, while the constables again and again intimated to her that she must go home.
When at length she wandered away in despair, she kept stopping; but up on the bridge over the waterfall she stood still a long while.
It roared so strangely down there in the dark. It seemed as if in some way or other she belonged to it.
All night she lay with a dull feeling of what had happened, and writhed under an unspeakable terror for the result of Nikolai's act.