Mikkelsen:—Olsen wasn’t allowed to go back to work?
Mrs. Lynggaard:—It was he who had been their leader, and it was his fault that they had held out as long as they did. And then Olsen began to look for work elsewhere, but none of the other companies would have anything to do with him.
Mikkelsen (shrugging his shoulders):—War is war.
Mrs. Lynggaard:—A few months later, as I was taking a walk, I was stopped on the street by Olsen’s wife. I tell you, the way she looked made my heart shrink within me. Her husband was completely broken down, she told me. And on top of it all he had taken to drink. Everything she and the children could scrape together, he spent on whiskey. She herself was so far gone with her eighth child that she would soon have to quit work.... Then I went home to my husband and begged and prayed him to take Olsen back and make a man of him again. It was the first time during our marriage that I saw him beside himself with rage. There came into his eyes such an evil expression that I wish I had never seen it, for I have never since been able to forget it entirely. But, of course, I guessed who was back of it. (With emphasis.) Then I did the most humiliating thing I have ever done: I went in secret to Heymann and pleaded for that discharged workman.
Mikkelsen:—Well, and Heymann?
Mrs. Lynggaard:—Since that moment I hate Heymann. There I was, humbling myself before him. And he measured me with cold eyes and said: “If I am to be in charge of this plant, madam, I must ask once for all and absolutely, that no outsiders interfere with the running of it.”
Mikkelsen:—I don’t see that he could have done anything else.
Mrs. Lynggaard:—What I cannot forgive myself is that I let myself be imposed upon by that man. I behaved like a coward. At that moment I should have gone to my husband and said: “This is what has happened—now you must choose between Heymann and me!” But I was so cowardly, that I didn’t even tell my husband what I had done.
Mikkelsen:—Nor was it proper for you to go behind your husband’s back like that.