At last the winter was giving way. One could see the spring was coming. The snow-cover began to melt, and the earth to peep out. It would still be a week or two before the ground was thawed, but it would not be long now before the dead could be taken away from the mortuary. And she longed—she longed so exceedingly for it.
Could she still picture to herself how he looked? She tried every day; but it was easier when it was winter. Now, when the spring was coming, it seemed as if he faded away from her. She was filled with despair. If she were only soon able to sit by his grave and be near to him again, then she would be able to see him again, to love him. Would he never be laid in his little grave? She must be able to see him again, see him through her whole life; she had no one else to love.
At last all her fears and scruples vanished before this great longing. She loved, she loved; she could not live without the dead! She knew now that she could not consider anybody or anything but him—him alone. And when the spring came in earnest, when mounds and graves once again appeared all over the churchyard, when the little hearts of the iron crosses again began to tinkle in the wind, and the beaded wreaths to sparkle in their glass cases, and when the earth at last was ready to receive the little coffin, she had ready a black cross to place on his grave. On the cross from arm to arm was written in plain white letters,
'HERE RESTS MY CHILD,'
and underneath, on the stem of the cross, stood her name.
She did not mind that the whole world would know how she had sinned. Other things were of no consequence to her; all she thought about was that she would now be able to pray at the grave of her child.
X. [The Brothers]
From a Swedish