"It is too dull and melancholy for you, Sigrun, to go on staying here," said Lotta. "I think you had better move over to the house to-morrow."
Sigrun started up; her face turned greyish pale.
"What do you mean?—what's that you say? Has he been bribing you?"
"Sigrun—you must be mad. How could you think of such a thing?"
"Mad—yes, Lotta. I am mad, maddened with fear. Oh, you don't know what I have suffered."
And she began to tell. Not much, but just enough to make Lotta understand. "And how can I go back to it all?" she said.
"But, Sigrun, it only shows how fond of you he is."
"I do not care for him," said Sigrun. "I have never, never been unfaithful to him, Lotta, mark my words; never in so much as a single thought. But he has never trusted me, and that hurts me. It hurts me more than anything else."
Lotta Hedman said something about jealousy being something that belonged to youth. It disappeared naturally as one grew older.
"No," said Sigrun. "Not with him. It is hereditary; all his family have been the same. He has promised me again and again to give it up. But what difference has it made? We moved up here into this wilderness, that he might be in peace. And you can see what we have gained by that.