The young countess turns away from him without answering. She is angry.
She goes back to her place thinking bitter thoughts of the pensioners. They have come to-night with horns and fiddles, and mean to let the bows scrape the strings until the horse-hair is worn through, without thinking that the merry tunes ring in the prisoner’s miserable room. They come here to dance until their shoes fall to pieces, and do not remember that their old benefactress can see their shadows whirling by the misty window-panes. Alas, how gray and ugly the world was! Alas, what a shadow trouble and hardness had cast over the young countess’s soul!
After a while Gösta comes to ask her to dance.
She refuses shortly.
“Will you not dance with me, countess?” he asks, and grows very red.
“Neither with you nor with any other of the Ekeby pensioners,” she says.
“We are not worthy of such an honor.”
“It is no honor, Herr Berling. But it gives me no pleasure to dance with those who forget the precepts of gratitude.”
Gösta has already turned on his heel.
This scene is heard and seen by many. All think the countess is right. The pensioners’ ingratitude and heartlessness had waked general indignation.