"What is the matter, what is the matter, Inger-Johanna?" he burst out.
"Go in—go into the room a little, Jäger." She knew how little he could bear. "Let her talk with me first, and then we will come in to you—it is surely not anything irreparable."
"Father, Ma? Why should not father understand me?"
"Come, come, child," the captain made haste to say; he had hardly any voice left.
And she sat down there in the sitting-room with her father by her side on the sofa and her mother on a chair, and told them how she had fought and striven to make herself fancy that her life's task lay with Rönnow.
She had created for herself a whole pile of illusions.
But then, on one day—and she also knew which one—they became like extinguished lights for her—black as coal and empty, wherever she looked—not what she had thought, not what she meant—like throwing herself into a desert.
"And aunt insisted that I should choose the pattern of my wedding dress. I think I should have gone into it blindly, with my eyes shut, nevertheless; for I thought of you, father, what you would say, and of you, mother,—and of the whole world outside, what it would say, if I thus, without any trace of reason, broke my engagement. And then I considered that everything was settled. I had thrown myself into the water and was only sinking, sinking—I had no right now to do anything else than drown. But then—"
"Well," a short ominous cough; the captain sat looking on the floor with his hands on his knees.
"Then," resumed Inger-Johanna with a low voice, still paler, and violently impressed with her subject—"Nay, there need not be any secret from you, father, and you, mother, since you otherwise would not understand me;—it came almost like a flash of lightning upon me, that for wholly one year, and perhaps for two, I had had my whole soul bound up with another."