“Gösta, I have never loved any one but you. Forgive me. Do not forsake me! You are the only one who can save me from myself.”
He thrust her from him.
“You do not speak the truth,” he said with icy calmness. “I do not know what you want of me, but I see that you are lying. Why do you want to keep me? You are so rich that you will never lack suitors.”
And so he went.
And not until he had closed the door, did regret and pain in all their strength take possession of Marianne’s heart.
It was love, her heart’s own child, who came out of the corner where the cold eyes had banished him. He came, he for whom she had so longed when it was too late.
When Marianne could with real certainty say to herself that Gösta Berling had forsaken her, she felt a purely physical pain so terrible that she almost fainted. She pressed her hands against her heart, and sat for hours in the same place, struggling with a tearless grief.
And it was she herself who was suffering, not a stranger, nor an actress. It was she herself. Why had her father come and separated them? Her love had never been dead. It was only that in her weak condition after her illness she could not appreciate his power.
O God, O God, that she had lost him! O God, that she had waked so late!