A faint sound stopped him. Helga was crying. Her crying seemed to search his innermost thoughts, and to say, "But have you any right to sacrifice me?"
"Helga! Helga!" he cried, but she took no notice. She covered her face with her hands, and her crying became deep and long and inconsolable.
He wished to comfort her, but he dare not do so. He remembered Thora and Magnus, the Factor, and his father, and his thoughts danced about his naked soul like demons.
"Helga! Helga!" he cried again, but still Helga's weeping continued. If it had gone on a moment longer he must have taken her in his arms again and told her that he loved her; that his love for her was above all laws, all illusions, all conventions; it was the commandment of Nature, and he was compelled to obey it; and they must fly from Iceland and never return, whatever the waste of ruined lives they had to leave behind them.
But Helga's crying stopped suddenly, and throwing back her head she said fiercely, "Very well, if you are satisfied, so am I!"
Then she leapt to her feet, wiped her eyes vigorously and laughed--a short, hard, bitter laugh, and after that Oscar recovered control of himself.
"Let us be off," she said.
Going back by the road that skirts the lake, side by side, but neither touching the other, and both silent, Oscar thought, "Good heavens, what an escape! Another moment and what might not have happened! What a fool I was to expose myself to this temptation! Marriage is my only safeguard. It must be soon. Thora and I must go away. When we return, Helga may be back in Denmark, and then a scene like this will never occur again!"
When they reached the house at last, he felt like an adulterer coming home after his first offense, but Thora looked happy and unsuspicious.
"I knew you couldn't tear yourselves away from your skating, so I put the tea away, and now supper is nearly ready," she said.