As she sat during the morning service listening to the sermon, she heard someone weeping and sobbing close by.
She thought it was one of those who sat beside her in the pew, but whether she looked to right or left she saw none but calm and devout worshippers.
Nevertheless, she plainly heard a sound of weeping, and it seemed so near to her that she might have touched the one who wept by putting out her hand.
Elsalill sat listening to the sighing and sobbing, and thought to herself that she had never heard so sorrowful a sound.
"Who is it that is afflicted with such deep grief that she must shed these bitter tears?" thought Elsalill.
She looked behind her, and she leaned forward over the next pew to see. But all were sitting in silence, and no face was wet with tears.
Then Elsalill thought there was no need to ask or wonder, for indeed she had known from the first who it was that wept beside her. "Dear sister," she whispered, "why do you not show yourself to me, as you did but lately? For you must know that I would gladly do all I may to dry your tears."
She listened for an answer, but none came. All she heard was the sobbing of the dead girl beside her.
Elsalill tried to hearken to what the preacher was saying in the pulpit, but she could follow little of it. And she grew impatient and whispered: "I know one who has more cause to weep than any, and that is myself. Had not my foster sister revealed her murderer to me I might have sat here with a heart full of joy."
As she listened to the weeping she became more and more resentful, so that she thought: "How can my dead foster sister require of me that I shall betray the man I love? Never would she herself have done such a thing, if she had lived."