It was Beerencreutz who answered:—
“We are here with your husband.”
They pushed forward Captain Lennart, and she saw him reel towards her, drunk, with a prize-fighter’s face; and behind him she saw the crowd of drunken, reeling men.
She took a step back; he followed with outstretched arms. “You left me as a thief,” she cried, “and come home as a vagabond.” Whereupon she turned to go in.
He did not understand. He wished to follow her, but she struck him a blow on the breast.
“Do you think that I will receive such a man as you as master in my house and over my children?”
The door slammed and the key turned in the lock.
Captain Lennart threw himself against the door and began to shake it.
The pensioners could not help it, they began to laugh. He had been so sure of his wife, and now she would have nothing to do with him. It was absurd, they thought.