This, indeed, was the general verdict.  No one who knew Soeren Kule blamed Ragni.  An old rake, blind and half-paralysed as the immediate result of ill-living, he had worried his first wife, Ragni’s sister, into the grave, and then taken advantage of the young girl’s innocence to marry her.  The man was a mass of corruption, and his second marriage was one of those strangely cruel crimes which go unpunished in the present state of society.  Kallem, who was then lodging in the same house as Kule, was maddened by it.  Being a doctor, he foresaw clearly the fate of the pure, lovely, girlish victim of Kule’s brutal passion, and in rescuing her from it he had displayed, in the opinion of his friends, the chivalry of soul of a modern knight-errant.

Pastor Meek was a liberal-minded and courageous old man; he showed his sympathy with the Kallems, and his trust in them, in a practical manner.

“My grandson, Karl,” he said to Kallem, “is at school here.  I wish you would let him come, now and then, to your house.  He is only nineteen years old, but he promises to be a first-rate composer.  Your wife plays the piano beautifully.  They ought to get on well together.”

Kallem was so pleased with this mark of approval that he went the next morning to the young musician’s lodgings, and invited him to come and live with him.  Karl Meek was a lanky, awkward hobbledehoy, with a tousled head of hair and long red hands, which were always covered with chilblains.  Ragni asked him to play a simple duet, but he made so many mistakes in playing that she got up from the piano.  He was upset, and ran away from the house.  Kallem spent an afternoon looking for him, and brought him back with his hair cut, his nails trimmed, and his clothes brushed.

“Can’t you see?” said Kallem to his wife.  “The lad’s shy and afraid of you.  Do, my dear, make him feel quite at home.”

Ragni was a sweet and gentle woman, and though she did not like Karl much at first, she took him in hand, and, little by little, obtained a great influence over the wild creature.  As his fine poetic nature gradually revealed itself, she began to mother him.  They were often seen walking out together, and as soon as the snow was firm, they used to go and meet Kallem, and drive home with him, each standing on one of the runners of his sledge.  One afternoon, after they had been skating together on the frozen bay, they were returning, without Kallem, when a carriage barred their way.  At the sound of Ragni’s voice, the man inside said: 

“There she goes!  Who is it with her?  Another man?  Ah, I thought that’s what would happen!”

Ragni shuddered.  It was Soeren Kule.  The paralysed old rake turned his blind face upon her, as though he could see her, and had caught her doing wrong.  The carriage stopped by the next house to the Kallems.  Before Kule could get out, Ragni had run indoors.  Shortly afterwards her husband arrived.  She saw that he, too, had met Kule, and he saw that she had gone into the bedroom to hide herself.  She buried her head in his arms; it seemed to her that the air was now full of evil spirits.