Even after Elsalill knows that her love is the murderer of her sister, she still hopes to escape the action this knowledge demands: she tries to persuade herself that because he wants to make up to Elsalill for the evil he did to her sister, she should give him a chance to save his soul. She thinks that her sister does not know he will atone for his sin and become a good man; her sister could not wish her unhappiness; how can she ask that Elsalill betray the man she loves?
But she hears her sister weep and she sees her sister's blood on the snow, and she turns him in quickly, hoping that will be enough. It isn't. Her choice requires that she give her life.
At the book's end Sir Archie, still clinging to his belief in money-power, still trying to use her saintliness to save his own soul, says he will erect a grand monument to her memory. He believes that if he leaves her body in Marstand she will have only a pauper's grave and be soon forgotten. An exactly opposite event occurs. A long procession walks out across the ice toward the ship; all the women of Marstand, young and old, are coming to retrieve Elsalill's body and carry her back "with all the honor that is her due."
The Treasure is a fable, a fairytale, an allegory of sisterhood itself. There is good reason that this book has been out of print for two generations. Daughters, Inc. is proud to retrieve Selma Lagerlof and publish her in English once again—with all the honor that is her due.
June Arnold Plainfield, Vermont 1973