The counselor shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of great impatience.
"I wish you could learn to see how wrong it is to let yourself be influenced by these moral views in society."
His wife was silent; it was her usual way of ending a conversation which she knew could lead to no result, since each kept his own opinion after all.
"Did you notice Arla?" asked the counselor.
"Yes. Why?"
"Did you not see that she made herself conspicuous by taking such an interest in this outlived Lagerskiöld?"
"I asked you not to invite Captain Lagerskiöld," said his wife mildly.
"The trouble is not there," interrupted her husband; "but the trouble is that your daughter is brought up to be a goose who understands nothing. That is the result of your convent system. Girls so guarded are always ready to fall into the arms of the first man who knows somewhat how to impress them."
This was the counselor's last remark before he fell asleep. It awakened a feeling of great bitterness and hopelessness in his wife. Her heart felt heavy at the thought of all the frivolity, all the impurity into which her girls were to be thrown one after another. When Arla, in whose earnestness and purity of character she had so great a confidence, had shown herself so little proof against temptation, what then would become of Gurli, who had such dangerous tendencies? And the two little ones who were now sleeping soundly in the nursery?
"To what use is then all the striving and all the prayers?" she asked herself. "What good then does it do to try to protect the children from evil, if just this makes them more of a prey to temptation?"