To return home seemed equally impossible. How could she tell her husband that she had given herself out as dead in order to escape from him? It was impossible—not to be thought of.
She knew that for the time being she was among good people. Should she ask them to help her? Again the same difficulty arose. She would have to confess her deceit, her shame. And these honest souls would feel compelled to inform her husband at once that she was alive.
"It was no fancy, after all, that of yesterday," she told herself. "It was Death that sat beside me on the sledge. And Death will not release one who has once given herself into his hands."
"But he is not a hard master," her restless thought went on. "He loosed the bonds that held me to earthly things, and in a gentle way. Why should I not trust him now?"
And so she remained sitting at the table for about an hour, trying to familiarize herself with the thought of death.
"God will be merciful," she said. "He knows all. He knows I did not mean harm to any one. And He knows that this is the one way open to me now."
Just then someone entered the room. But Sigrun did not move. It was utterly indifferent to her now, whoever saw her. Her decision was taken, and she knew what she had to do.
She lay still bowed over the table with her face in her hands, and could not see who had come in. The step, however, told her that it was a man, and not an old, but a young man.
"It is Sven Elversson himself," she thought.
She heard him approaching her at first; then he drew back. He went to the stove, lit a fire there, and returned to the table where she sat.