She was quite in despair as she walked towards the lake. She felt she did not know what ought to be done—felt that she must give it all up. Oh, God, to have him walking behind her apparently strong and hale, and yet so helplessly, incurably sick!
They had reached the lake, and she was putting on her skates. She also wanted him to skate, and helped him to put on his skates; but he fell as soon as he got on to the ice. He scrambled to the bank and sat down on a stone, and she skated away from him.
Just opposite the stone upon which Gunnar Hede was sitting was an islet overgrown with birches and poplars, and behind it the radiant evening sky, which was still flaming red. And the fine, light, leafless tops of the trees stood against the glorious sky with such beauty that it was impossible not to notice it.
Is it not a fact that one always recognises a place by a single feature? One does not exactly know how even the most familiar spot looks from all sides. And Munkhyttan one always knew by the little islet. If one had not seen the place for many years, one would know it again by this islet, where the dark tree-tops were lifted towards the sunset.
Hede sat quite still, and looked at the islet and at the branches of the trees and at the gray ice which surrounded it.
This was the view he knew best of all; there was nothing on the whole estate he knew so well, for it was always this islet that attracted the eye. And soon he was sitting looking at the islet without thinking about it, just as one does with things one knows so well. He sat for a long time gazing. Nothing disturbed him, not a human being, not a gust of wind, no strange object. He could not see Ingrid; she had skated far away on the ice.
A rest and peace fell upon Gunnar Hede such as one only feels in home surroundings. Security and peace came to him from the little islet; it quieted the everlasting unrest that tormented him.
Hede always imagined he was amongst enemies, and always thought of defending himself. For many years he had not felt that peace which made it possible for him to forget himself. But now it came upon him.
Whilst Gunnar Hede was sitting thus and not thinking of anything, he happened mechanically to make a movement as one may do when one finds one's self in accustomed circumstances. As he sat there with the shining ice before him and with skates on his feet, he got up and skated on to the lake, and he thought as little of what he was doing as one thinks of how one is holding fork or spoon when eating.
He glided over the ice; it was glorious skating. He was a long way off the shore before he realized what he was doing.