Laura smiled an exquisite little smile and played with her suede shoe beneath her striped silk skirt:
“Yes, I have sold a couple to him.”
Then Stellan’s voice sounded, far away and impersonal:
“Has anyone anybody else to propose?”
Levy suddenly looked at Hedvig. Yes, now he looked at her inquiringly, exactingly, severely. It seemed as if his black pupils would draw her out of her silent corner. He made a gesture. It was something indescribable, something between a shrug of the shoulders and a passionate, supplicating seizing of a receding cloak, the gesture with which one appeals to a hardened miser in a bazaar in the East. Did she not see how they were playing with him, sneering at him, wanting to kick him out? Had he helped her or had he not? Were they friends or not? Did he love her or not? Were they to marry or not?
Hedvig sat there fingering her pencil. Her face was white. She shivered for cold. What was it Levy asked of her? Yes, only that she should propose the re-election of the present board. She must do it at once or it would be too late. But why did she not say what she had to say? Why could she not move her tongue? Why was she so afraid of her own voice?
Hedvig’s glance left Levy and roamed about the room. Ugh! how many eyes about her—how horribly many! There sat Stellan pretending to look at his nails, there Peter sat staring and sulking, there Laura eyed her with cold scorn. And they all waited for her confession. Go on, admit now that you are in love with Levy! Call out to anybody who cares to listen that you are in love with Levy.
Hedvig sat there as if paralysed, incapable of moving either hand or tongue.
She was silent—and condemned herself to silence for all her life.
Then Stellan’s voice sounded with cruel, calculated hardness: