"Are you waiting," he said, "for me to introduce my wife? Well, here she is--Ragni Kallem."
So the pair had married in America! If Tuft and Josephine had not been so eager to impute every sort of misconduct to runaways, they would have foreseen this natural event. Tuft tried to find something to say, but failed, and glanced at Josephine. But she did not look as if she were willing to help him.
For the fact that Edward and Ragni were now married increased rather than diminished Josephine's bitterness. Although she would not admit it to herself, her religious objections were a mere pretence. She was jealous, jealous with the strange jealousy of a sister who wanted to be all in all to her brilliant brother, and hated that another woman should be more to him than she was. All her life had been centred on him. She had married Ole Tuft, a poor peasant's son, because he was the bosom friend of Edward. Her marriage, she thought, would connect them still more closely. She wanted to live by his side, watching him rise into fame as the greatest doctor in Norway. For young Kallem's masters had predicted that he would prove to be a man of genius.
Possessing considerable wealth, he had taken up the study of medicine, not as a means of livelihood, but as a matter of love and duty. Then, six years ago, he had run off with old Sören Kule's young wife, and Josephine's dream had come to an end, leaving her life little more than a dull, empty round of routine housework.
This was why she now gazed with hard, cold eyes at Ragni. Edward Kallem saw her look of wild hatred, and, taking his weeping wife gently by the arm, he turned away, and led her from the house into the road.
Josephine went upstairs, and gazed from the study window at the retreating figures. Her husband followed her, with a curious look in his eyes. Neither of them spoke. In their hearts was raging a storm of passion wilder than the anger which possessed Kallem, and the sorrow which bowed down Ragni.
Josephine left the room without looking-at her husband. He gazed after her still with the same curious look in his eyes. Then, pulling himself together, he went on writing his sermon. "What makes God so merciful to sinners?" he wrote. "His infinite love? Yes, justification is certainly an act of mercy, but it is also an act of judgment. The claims of the law must be first fulfilled. A sinner must believe in order to be saved."
The point in this was that Edward Kallem was a freethinker. There could be no forgiveness for him. At the bottom of his heart, Tuft was glad that there had been no reconciliation. Ever since he had married the wealthy and beautiful sister of his bosom friend, he had been jealous of Josephine's passionate attachment to her brother. Her brother had remained her hero, and the peasant she had married and enriched was little more than her servant.
While, with these bitter thoughts in his head, Tuft was composing his sermon Josephine was writing a dastardly letter. It was to Sören Kule. Edward and Ragni had returned, married. There was an empty house near the one they had bought. Would Sören Kule come and live in it? So the letter ran. The next day, Sunday, Josephine went to church in a very Christianlike frame of mind. She felt she had done her duty, and avenged herself in doing it.