"Let me tell you how it was she first came to speak to me. Then you will understand what she was like."
"Do," he said. "That will be best. And take your time. We have all the day before us."
"Well, it was when we were going to the confirmation classes, and one morning, in the interval, some of us, a dozen, perhaps, were standing in a corner of the churchyard talking about a piece in the catechism. I remember one of the boys said he was sure God loved mankind, for He had made us, and so, of course, He must be pleased with His own work.
"Now the few of us standing there together, we were the youngest at the classes, and poor folk's children, all of us. The others, who were better and finer than the rest of us, walked up and down outside the church in little groups, and now and then stopped to gather round the Dean's daughter; she was going to be confirmed that year too. She was beautiful to look at, and there was something about her that drew people to her. You could hardly help looking over to where she was.
"But we others, we knew, of course, that we couldn't expect her to take any notice of us, and so we had to be content with standing in a corner talking about the catechism.
"'If we were all like her,' I said to the others, 'then God might well be pleased with us all.'
"It was the Dean's daughter we were thinking of, and then we all turned and stood looking at her.
"She had the loveliest soft brown hair, all curling at the temples and falling in soft waves over the brow and neck. A longish face, with thin cheeks and long eyelashes, and eyes like a deep well to look down in. And she seemed to be made somehow of finer stuff than the rest of us. Like some berries you can see through. She was rather tall, and walked with her head a little drooping to one side, and it seemed to us that suited her, with her looks and manner altogether."
The listener bent forward suddenly, covering his eyes with his hand. The vision of a dearly loved face rose up before him. He saw it now as it had appeared to him that day at sea, when beauty after beauty passed before their eyes. So strangely young and questioning.
"Sigrun was her name," said Lotta Hedman. "And it was an uncommon name, but that was not the only thing uncommon about her.