At sight of his unspoken misery, Kyllikki felt her own dread rise up stronger than ever.

“I knew the suffering would come,” she said mournfully.  “So many have had their place in your heart that I could not hope to fill it all myself at first.  But I love you so, and I felt so strong, I thought I could win my way into it little by little until it was all mine ... and now....”  She broke off, and fell to sobbing anew.

Olof would have given anything to speak to her then, but found no words.

“And it is so terrible to see it all and be helpless,” she went on.  “You are a wanderer still—­and I cannot hold you ... you leave me—­for those that wait for you....”

“O Heaven!” cried Olof in agony.  “Kyllikki, don’t—­don’t speak like that.  You know I do not care for any other—­would not be with any other but you.”

“But you go—­even against your will.  And they come towards you smiling.  I am all alone—­and they are so many.  And they must win—­for I can give no more than one woman can.  But they are for ever whispering to you of what a woman can give but once in her life—­each in her own way....”

“Kyllikki!” Olof broke in imploringly.

But she went on unheeding, pouring out her words like a stream in flood-time.

“And they hate me because I thought to keep you for myself alone.  And while you lie in my arms, they come smiling and whispering and thread their arms between us and offer you their lips....”

“Kyllikki!” he cried again, and grasped at her hand like a drowning man.

“And then—­then it is no longer me you hold in your arms, but those others; not my lips, but theirs, you kiss....”  She tore her hand away, and broke out weeping anew.

Olof sat as if turned to stone.  The thing was said—­it was as if a secret curse was for ever dogging his footsteps, and spreading poison all around.

Kyllikki’s despair gathered and grew like an avalanche.  What a blind self-deceit their life had been!  How they had hoped and dreamed—­with a gulf of naked hopelessness on every side!

“If only I had—­what I have hoped for these last two years, then I could bear it all.  For that—­none could rob me of that!  But now—­I know why it has not come.  And now there is no hope even of that!”

And she groaned aloud.

Olof felt as if a dagger’s thrust had pierced the tenderest nerve of an already aching wound.  He had tried to comfort her, though he himself had long since lost all hope.  The fault could only lie with him—­and now he understood!  He felt himself crushed by a weight of despair, and sat there staring before him, without a word.

Kyllikki grew calmer after a while, and looked up.  The silence of the place came to her now for the first time, and with it a new dread.  She turned to Olof, and at sight of his face, drawn with despair, and darkly shadowed in the gloom, she realised what her words must have meant to him.