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 Soeren 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 Soeren Kule.  Edward and Ragni had returned, married.  There was an empty house near the one they had bought.  Would Soeren 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.

II.—­The Poison of Tongues

At first things did not go as Josephine expected.  With the exception of his sister and brother-in-law, everybody welcomed Edward Kallem and his wife back to his native town.  At the house of Pastor Meek, the oldest and most influential of the clergy, Ragni was introduced to a middle-aged lady, who startled her by saying: 

“I am Soeren Kule’s sister.  I want to tell you that, in your position, I should have acted just as you did.”