"Then Sigrun drew herself up.
"'Now you are wicked and unkind,' she said, 'to speak like that just because someone says things that do not please you to hear.'
"And then she went away for good.
"And I was glad that mother and father did not say anything, did not try to comfort me or explain things. I went out into the kitchen, all cold as it was, and sat down and cried. Cried for hours together. Crying for our beautiful friendship, and for my own soul that had been taken away and could never come back; I felt myself wronged and betrayed; and for the first time in my life I tasted that bitter fruit."
Lotta Hedman had lowered her voice, just as when she had ended her long speech about the letter to the King and the Millennium. Her face showed deep suffering; she felt the agony of humiliation.
[HÅNGER]
OH, BUT Lotta Hedman was glad to tell her story. It was a delight to be able to speak of Sigrun.
And she tried so hard to speak properly, and not in her country dialect; tried to speak as seriously as a book of devotion. And she was grateful to her listener, who sat there still, following all she said, with a patience that seemed as if it would never end.
"And now there is only one thing more I have to tell you before you can give me the advice I want," she said.
"Do not put yourself out in any way at all," he said. "Talk as you please; we have time enough before us."