Sigrun lay without speaking, searching her memory.
"Lotta," she said, after a while, "this is a strange thing. It must be Sven Elversson, and no other, that you met. He is just as you said to look at, and it would be just like him to run away as soon as you began to see visions that would remind him of ice-fields and the Arctic."
"Who is Sven Elversson?" asked Lotta.
Sigrun roused herself a little from her dreamy state and told Lotta something of Sven Elversson's story.
"I wish I knew where he is now," she said at last. "He was a very good man, and very unhappy. I believe he felt himself so despised, so trodden underfoot, that he looked on it as his business to attend to things which others counted themselves too good for. Once he let himself be shut up in a cell with a murderer, to get him to confess. He married a woman from a children's school, one of the ugliest creatures I have ever seen. That was out of sheer humility, too, I suppose. When we lived at Applum, everybody spoke of him. But he moved away from there before we did."
Lotta Hedman remembered her travelling companion's gentle voice and the feeling of confidence with which he had inspired her.
"Be sure God has some purpose in view with that man," she said. "If only I had known of this when I met him."
"I wish I knew where he is to be found," said Sigrun. "All who are miserable and in trouble turn to him. There has been so little news of him since he left Applum. He must have hidden himself away in some place where no one knows his story."
That evening, when they spoke of Sven Elversson, Sigrun was up and dressed again. She had even been through into the next room. Lotta had moved out chairs and a table, and the great cauldron was hidden by the pink curtains. The housemaid had laid a tray with tea for Sigrun and Lotta, and they were comfortable as could be.
But when the maid asked if Mistress was not well enough now to move over into the house again, Sigrun answered quickly: