"It is God Himself helping me, Lotta," she said. "Now I can go away without making Edward unhappy. Oh, I don't mean he would not mourn for me a year or two, perhaps, but it would be without bitterness. But if I ran away from him—do you think he would ever allow it? He would go out to search for me everywhere, and when he found me, he might kill me. Or if I got a divorce? It would be the death of him. But to go this way—out of life altogether...."
"It would only be a quiet sorrow. He could not be jealous of Death. Don't you see, Lotta, how much better it would be for him than anything else?"
"For him, perhaps," said Lotta. "But for you?"
"For me," said the young wife, with a smile that was like a light from heaven—"for me, all is good that is best for him."
"The best thing for him would be to keep you," said Lotta decidedly.
"But I cannot!" cried Sigrun despairingly. "You don't know what it means to be watched every hour, never to be free. You don't know what it is, with all these terrible scenes and quarrels and promises to be better, when it never is better, and ill-humour and misery. You don't know what it is to go in constant fear of something dreadful happening. To be always forced to lie and hide things, though you have done nothing but what was good and right. Oh, you don't know what it is like, or you would not ask me to go back."
"No," said Lotta—"no, angel dear, I did not know you had suffered like that. You have never spoken of it until yesterday and to-day. But is there no other way?"
Sigrun rose to her feet. "There is one way. And God has sent it. But Lotta Hedman will not let me take that way."
Nothing could describe the torturing power of Sigrun's beauty as she spoke such words as these. A witchery seemed to emanate from her being, and she knew it, and never, perhaps, had she used it so mercilessly, so victoriously as to-night.
"I am doing no wrong, Lotta," she said. "I am going to the war, to help the wounded. That is my one desire. I am ashamed to stay at home doing nothing. You know it is what I have longed for all my life. And God is helping me, Lotta. Why will you not help me?"