“I couldn’t help it,” she thinks, but that brings her no comfort now.
At one moment she tells herself that since she has renounced her race she must run away somewhere—she cannot live at Knockaloe any longer. But then she thinks of Oskar, that he must remain, and cries in her heart:
“I can’t! I can’t!”
And remembering what Oskar had said about her in court she throws up her head and thinks:
“Why should I?”
When the time comes to lock up the house for the night she finds a letter which has been pushed under the door. It is on prisoners’ notepaper and in a handwriting she has never seen before, and it contains three words only:
“God bless you!”
Instantly, instinctively, she lifts it to her lips and kisses it. But at the next moment, as she is going upstairs, the old weakness comes sweeping back on her.
“I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it! God forgive me!”