“Where is your companion?”
Sintram lifts his blanket, and shows Anna a man who is lying asleep on the bottom of the sledge. “He is a little drunk,” he says; “but what does that matter? He will sleep. It’s an old acquaintance, moreover; it is Gösta Berling.”
Anna shudders.
“Well, I will tell you,” continues Sintram, “that she who forsakes the man she loves sells him to the devil. That was the way I got into his claws. People think they do so well, of course; to renounce is good, and to love is evil.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” asks Anna, quite disturbed.
“I mean that you should not have let Gösta Berling go from you, Miss Anna.”
“It was God’s will.”
“Yes, yes, that’s the way it is; to renounce is good, and to love is evil. The good God does not like to see people happy. He sends wolves after them. But if it was not God who did it, Miss Anna? Could it not just as well have been I who called my little gray lambs from the Dovre mountains to hunt the young man and the young girl? Think, if it was I who sent the wolves, because I did not wish to lose one of my own! Think, if it was not God who did it!”
“You must not tempt me to doubt that,” says Anna, in a weak voice, “for then I am lost.”