Magnus felt his fingers tighten their hold on the rock he was clinging to, and he leaned forward to catch Thora's reply. But there was only the same low murmur of indistinguishable words, and then Oscar's voice once more,
"Magnus? No doubt! I wouldn't say a word against Magnus--God forbid!--but love--mutual love--is the only basis of a true marriage, and if you do not love Magnus--not really and truly, as you say--why did you consent to marry him?"
Magnus felt the ground to be reeling under his knees. If he had not been clinging to the rock he must have rolled to the foot of it. All his soul seemed to listen, but he could hear nothing except the sound of Thora's voice breaking with sobs.
Then came Oscar's voice again, but lower and tenderer than before, "How hateful of me to make you cry, Thora! I didn't intend to do that, dear. But have you never asked yourself what will happen if you marry Magnus, and then find out when it is too late that you like somebody else?"
At that there came another note into Thora's weeping, a note of joy as well as sorrow, and Magnus--though he did not know it--clambered higher up the rock.
"What did you say, Thora? Tell me, dear, tell me--did you say you had found out already?"
And then at last came Thora's voice in a burst of passionate tears, "You know I have, Oscar," and after that there was a startled cry.
Thora had risen and was moving toward Oscar, who was already on his feet and holding out his arms to her, when behind him she saw Magnus with a terrible face--eyes staring, lips parted, and breath coming and going in gusts. Oscar turned to see what it was that Thora looked at and, seeing Magnus, his whole body seemed to shrink in an instant, and he felt like a little man.
"Is it--you--really?" he faltered, and he smiled a sickly smile, but Magnus neither saw nor heard him.
Magnus heard nothing, saw nothing, and knew nothing at that first moment except that he, a man of awful strength and passion, was standing at the mouth of a pit as deep as hell and as silent as the grave, with two who had been dearer to him than any others in the world, and they had deceived and betrayed him. But at the next moment he saw a look in Thora's face that made him remember Hans, the sailor, for it was the same look that he had seen there the instant after he had thrown the man on his back, and then a ghostly hand seemed to touch him on the shoulder and the fearful impulse passed.