And she asks, as she asked once before,—
“What do you want?”
Whereupon the colonel answers, as he answered once before,—
“We are here with your husband.”
She looks at him, where he stands stiff and calm as usual. She looks at the bearers behind him, who are weeping, and at all that mass of people. She stands there on the steps and looks into hundreds of weeping eyes, who stare sadly up at her. Last she looks at her husband, who lies stretched out on the bier, and she presses her hand to her heart. “That is his right face,” she murmurs.
Without asking more, she bends down, draws back a bolt, opens the hall-doors wide, and then goes before the others into the bedroom.
The colonel helps her to drag out the big bed and shake up the pillows, and so Captain Lennart is once more laid on soft down and white linen.
“Is he alive?” she asks.
“Yes,” answers the colonel.
“Is there any hope?”