"She was fond of them," he said, "and they are never touched by any hand but mine. Those others out there are never allowed to see anything of all this."
He showed her the little picture of the home at Stenbroträsk, which had comforted Sigrun so many times. It was wrapped in several layers of tissue paper, rolled up in a cloth, and packed away at the back of a drawer, as if it had been something precious.
"You don't think I would ever let any one else look at this?" he said.
He brought out a little cloth which Sigrun had worked for him.
"It is always on that table," he said, "because Sigrun herself put it there. But I have another that I put over it when the sun shines in—you can see it is not faded."
Sigrun had made a cushion for his rocking-chair, and the fringe at the bottom had come loose in one or two places. He had tried to mend it himself, sewing with coarse thread and big stitches. He held it up now to show—clumsily done it was, but he could not entrust the work to any other hand.
Sigrun's mother offered to take it up with her to her room and mend it properly. He allowed her to do so, but held the cushion long in his hands, turning it over and over, before he could let it go.
The dearest treasures of all, Sigrun's two plain rings and one other ring, and one or two little gold trinkets, he had put away in a little leather bag.
"I carry that about with me all day in my waistcoat pocket," he said. "And at night it is under my pillow. It never leaves me night or day."
Sigrun's mother was moved to deep sympathy. She saw how his sorrow was tearing at him, threatening to rend him asunder. And she understood that he strove against it in the presence of others, tried to be as he had been, but could not, and that it was this which made such discord in his being.