“You were ever a good husband, Lavrans.”
“Hm,” Lavrans sat with his chin resting on his knees. “Yet had it mayhap been better with you, if you had been wedded even as our daughter was to-day—”
Ragnfrid started up with a low, piercing cry:
“You know! How did you know it—how long have you known—?”
“I know not what ’tis you speak of,” said Lavrans after a while in a strange deadened voice.
“This do I speak of—that I was no maid, when I came to be your wife,” said Ragnfrid, and her voice rang clear in her despair.
In a little while Lavrans answered, as before:
“That have I never known, till now.”
Ragnfrid laid her down among the hay, shaken with weeping. When the fit was over she lifted her head a little. A faint grey light was beginning to creep in through the window-hole in the wall. She could dimly see her husband sitting with his arms thrown round his knees, motionless as stone.
“Lavrans—speak to me—” she wailed.