“But I am merely going to see why I am wanted,” she said. “I shall soon come back.”
She struggled to get away and to go where the voice summoned, but he would not release her, and he ordered the servants to shut and bolt all the doors. Then she sank into a chair and said: “I see you will not let me go.”
So her husband thought she was resigned to staying, and that she had gotten over her mad impulse to obey the voice. But no sooner did he loose his hold on her hand and turn away than she sprang to her feet, made a sudden dash to a door, unbolted and opened it, and darted out. He followed her and contrived to grasp her fur coat. Thus he was able to restrain her while he implored her not to go, and told her she certainly would never return. She made no reply, but let her arms fall backward, and suddenly slipped out of the coat and left it in her husband’s hands. The poor man seemed turned to stone, without power to move, as he gazed after her hurrying away from him, and listened to her calling as she ran: “I am coming! I am coming!”
When she was quite out of sight he went into the house, saying: “If she is so foolish as to wish to leave us forever, I cannot help it. I warned and implored her to pay no heed to that voice, however loudly it might call.”
The rest of the family lived peacefully after this for a number of years. But at last the man was one day at the barber’s being shaved. The shop was full of people, and his chin had been covered with lather. Suddenly he started up from his chair and called out in a loud voice: “I won’t come! Do you hear? I won’t come!”
The barber and the other people in the shop listened to him with astonishment. Again he looked toward the door, and exclaimed, “I tell you once for all that I do not mean to come; so go away!”
A few minutes later he shouted: “Go away or it will be the worse for you. You may call as much as you like, but you will not get me to come.”
He grew as angry as if some one was actually standing at the door tormenting him. Finally he got up and said to the barber: “Give me the razor you are using. I’ll teach that fellow to leave people alone for the future.”
He snatched the razor out of the barber’s hand and rushed forth from the shop as if he were running after some one. The barber did not wish to lose his razor, and he pursued the man to rescue it. They both continued at full speed out of the town until they came to the edge of a precipice. Down this the man plunged head foremost, and he never was seen again. So he, too, like the others, had been forced, against his will, to follow the voice that called him.
