“Everything gets found out, seems to me,” he objected.

“Not by a long way,” she answered.  And whether to astonish him or to encourage him, or perhaps from sheer vanity and as something to boast of, all of a sudden she threw a bombshell.  Thus:  “I’ve done something myself that never got found out.”

“You?” said he, all unbelieving.  “What have you done?”

“What have I done?  Killed something.”

She had not meant, perhaps, to go so far, but she had to go on now; there he was, staring at her.  Oh, and it was not grand, indomitable boldness even; it was mere bravado, vulgar showing off; she wanted to look big herself, and silence him.  “You don’t believe me?” she cried.  “D’you remember that in the paper about the body of a child found in the harbour?  ’Twas me that did it.”

“What?” said he.

“Body of a child.  You never remember anything.  We read about it in the paper you brought up.”

After a moment he burst out:  “You must be out of your senses!”

But his confusion seemed to incite her more, to give her a sort of artificial strength; she could even give the details.  “I had it in my box—­it was dead then, of course—­I did that as soon as it was born.  And when we got out into the harbour, I threw it overboard.”

Axel sat dark and silent, but she went on.  It was a long time back now, many years, the time she had first come to Maaneland.  So, there, he could see ’twas not everything was found out, not by a long way!  What would things be like if everything folk did got out?  What about all the married people in the towns and the things they did?  They killed their children before they were born—­there were doctors who managed that.  They didn’t want more than one, or at most two children, and so they’d get in a doctor to get rid of it before it come.  Ho, Axel need not think that was such a great affair out in the world!

“Ho!” said Axel.  “Then I suppose you did get rid of the last one too, that way?”

“No, I didn’t,” she answered carelessly as could be, “for I dropped it,” she said.  But even then she must go on again about it being nothing so terrible if she had.  She was plainly accustomed to think of the thing as natural and easy; it did not affect her now.  The first time, perhaps, it might have been a little uncomfortable, something of an awkward feeling about it, to kill the child; but the second?  She could think of it now with a sort of historic sense:  as a thing that had been done, and could be done.

Axel went out of the house heavy in mind.  He was not so much concerned over the fact that Barbro had killed her first child—­that was nothing to do with himself.  That she had had a child at all before she came to him was nothing much either; she was no innocent, and had never pretended to be so, far from it.  She had made no secret of her knowledge, and had taught him many things in the dark.  Well and good.  But this last child—­he