"I want you to understand that I do not feel toward you as all the others do," she said.
And, stepping ashore, she walked across the sand without looking backhand in through the pass between the rocks.
But before she had gone many steps, Sven Elversson was at her side, and laid one hand on her arm, that she should stop.
"Thank you ... God bless you ..." he said softly, brokenly. "But remember," he went on, "you must never, never do such a thing again. And you must not tell your husband what you have done. If you told him, then in his jealousy he might kill you."
Sven Elversson was gone, and the young wife walked on alone through the fields, with his last words still in her ears.
"Jealousy!"—could it be true that her husband was jealous? "Oh, heavens, no!" she thought to herself. "It is impossible. He must know that I am his with all my soul, with all my thoughts and feelings."
It seemed so cruelly unjust that any one should ever think her husband jealous; the tears rose to her eyes again.
"Heaven knows how it is with that Sven Elversson," she said to herself. "There are many that cannot bear the sight of him, but they all say he is a good man. But perhaps, after all, he is not suffering undeservedly. How could Edward ever be jealous about me? And that was what he was reckoning out to himself while I was talking to him in the boat.
"I wish he were here, so that I could tell him the truth. And the truth is just this—that Edward does not love me any more. It is his misfortune, and mine. But he is not jealous. Oh, a man such as he, so far above all others, who is there he could be jealous of? And that fellow actually thought he could be jealous of him!
"He has ceased to love me," she told herself once more. "He can't help not loving me any more, but he cannot have ceased to believe in me, and in my love for him. It would be too unjust, too blind—it would be almost ridiculous."