The man before her looked up with a sad smile.
"You might surely have known it must be so," he said. "Sigrun had given herself to him with all her soul, with all her thoughts, and all she had ever known."
"That was so, perhaps," said the other, "but it was cruel to me to feel. Mother tried to answer for me, for she knew I could not say anything myself then.
"'She has but a foolish mother, has my girl,' said mother. 'But the Lord has heard my prayers. He has given me a daughter that sees and understands more than most.'
"I felt how brave it was of mother to speak out. I could have gone down on my knees and thanked her, but she was silent, she too, when the priest gave her one sharp look through his eyeglasses, and began talking with a thick and heavy voice, all important, as if he might have been standing in the pulpit.
"'We've need to be ever watchful, those of us who are Christians,' he said, 'lest we should fall back into heathen ways. And whosoever seeks to penetrate into the unknown is trying, as it were, to go their own way instead of the way that is Christ Jesus. Beware of setting up other gods; of setting up oneself as God.'
"And he preached like that for a long while. And nobody in the room dared to say a word against him now. And where was all that I had seen and heard before? It all seemed blown away in a breath, the moment that man came into the house. And I had to sit there, helpless, without a word, and hear him preaching and correcting me in front of Sigrun and mother and father.
"I looked over at Sigrun, and there she was sitting, looking up at her lover all humbly and admiring. And I could see she was pleased that he was trying to lead me into the right way. And she, too, felt now just as he did, that all we had had to talk of together before was something wicked and harmful. He was speaking for my good, and all I had to do was to turn from my erring ways and try to be like everyone else.
"I was so miserable; it was so cruel. I would rather have died than sit there and see Sigrun turn away from me like that."
The listener looked up once more.