"There is so much to say. I hardly know how to begin." For a moment she was on the point of giving way to tears, but restrained herself. "We were not very happy in our marriage, my husband and I."
He did not seem to notice that she was standing while he was seated. But he understood that she needed help to tell her story.
"My wife was not happy either," he said.
He rested one elbow on the table and leaned forward so as to cover his eyes.
Sigrun understood that he was encouraging her to go on.
"There's been talk about us here and there, I dare say," she continued. "If you were in Algeröd yesterday, no doubt you heard about the scene with the man who was staying with us...."
"Yes," he said, "I heard that and more. But there was no ill-will in what was said. Only sorrow—nothing but sorrow."
His voice was almost a sob. He felt the old fierce pain once more. It hurt him beyond words to speak to her like this, when his one desire was to lay his head in her lap and tell her of the sorrow that had racked him the day before and the misery of this morning, when he learned that his wife had come back now—now that his heart longed only to be left to its sorrow for another.
"And no one doubted that I was dead?" asked Sigrun.
"No," he said. "No one doubted that you had died of the smallpox."