And so it was.  Edward Kallem did not know it, as he was now too busy to go out anywhere.  He was spending a great deal of his wealth in fitting out a private hospital for the study and treatment of the diseases that he specialised in.  But Karl Meek soon became aware of malign influences working around him, and around the two persons for whom he would willingly, nay, happily, have laid down his life.  He met an old friend in the street, who said to him: 

“How do you stand in regard to Mrs. Kallem?”

Karl did not take in his meaning, and began to praise Ragni enthusiastically.

“Yes, I know all about that,” his friend interrupted.  “But, to make a clean breast of it, are you her lover?”

“How dare you, how dare you!” cried Karl.

His friend quietly said that he only wanted to warn Karl; the report had certainly got about.

“You’ve been a great deal together, you know,” said his friend; “that has given the scandal-mongers something to go on.”

Both Edward and Ragni saw that something had happened to Karl when he returned.  He was in a black mood; he did not speak; his blue eyes were, by turns, strangely savage and strangely sorrowful.  He had to go home at once, he said.  He could not tell them now what the matter was, but he would write to them, as soon as he could pluck up the courage to do so.  He packed his luggage, and Kallem went to see him off.

A few days afterwards, Ragni received a letter from Karl.  He was going to Berlin, he said, to take up the study of music seriously.  And then, for four pages, he talked about his prospects.  But there was another page, a loose one, on which was written in red ink:  “Read this when you are alone.”

“I have decided, Ragni,” Karl wrote, “that it would be wisest to tell you why I left so suddenly.  Someone has started a dreadful slander against us.  If I do not now tell you, you will hear it from the lips of some enemy.  Ah, God! that I should have brought this upon you!  Love you?  Of course I love you.  How could I help doing so, after all your kindness to me?  And as for Edward, I worship the ground he treads on.  He is the noblest man I have ever met.  But do not show him this letter.  Spare him the evil news as long as possible.  Now that I have gone away, it may all blow over.”

Kallem did not get home from the hospital that night until eight o’clock.  When he came home his wife was lying in bed with a headache.  She did not get up the next morning.  She was in bed several days.  When at last she got up, her husband noticed that she had grown very thin; her face had a tired, delicate expression; there were dark rings around her sweet eyes, and she was troubled with a cough.

III.—­The Fell Work of Slander

Ragni now did not stir outside her own door.  She longed for fresh air, but she would not go out into the town for fear of the cruel, curious eyes of the scandal-mongers.  Soeren Kule haunted her.  His house overlooked her garden, and she got the strange fancy into her head that he was always sitting at the window blindly listening for her.  So she never even went for a walk in the park-like grounds which Kallem had purchased wholly for her pleasure.