Olof was ashy pale and his eyelids quivered nervously.

The woman’s face had lost its scornful look, the hardness of her features had relaxed.  She was silent a moment, and when she spoke again, seemed altogether changed.  She spoke softly and gently, with a tremor in her voice.

“Even you, Olof, even you do not understand.  I know what you are thinking now.  You ask, what right have I to reproach you, seeing that I was never yours as—­as the others were?  It is true, but for all that you were more closely bound to me, with a deeper tie, than with the others.  What do I care for them?  They do not matter—­it is nothing to me if they ever existed or not.  But you and I—­we were united, though perhaps you cannot understand....  Olof!  When I sat close to you, in your arms, I felt that my blood belonged to you, and that feeling I have never altogether lost.  It is you I have been seeking through all these years—­you, and something to still the longing you set to grow in my soul.  Men fondled me with coarse hands, and had their will of me—­and I thought of your caresses; it was with you, with you I sinned!”

The sweat stood out in beads on Olof’s brow—­the torture was almost more than he could bear.  “I know, I know!” he would have said.  “Say no more—­I know it all!” But he could not frame a single word.

She moved nearer, watching him closely.

And slipping to the floor beside him, she clasped his knees.

“Olof—­don’t look like that!” she cried.  “Don’t you see, it is not you alone I mean.  Tear out your eyes—­no, no, I didn’t mean it, Olof!  Oh, I am mad—­we are all mad, we have sinned....  Do not hate me, do not send me away.  I am worthless now, I know, but it was you I loved, Olof, you and no other.”

Olof writhed in horror, as if all his past had come upon him suddenly like a monster, a serpent that was crushing him in its toils.

“No, let me stay a little yet, do not send me away.  Only a moment, Olof, and I will go.  No, I will not reproach you—­you did not know me then.  And I knew nothing—­how should we have known?”

She was silent for a moment, watching his face.  Then she went on: 

“Tell me one thing—­those others—­have any of them come to you—­since?  Ah, I can see it in your eyes.  None who have known you could ever forget.  If only you had been like all the rest—­we do not long for them when they are gone.  But you were—­you.  And a woman must ever come back to the man that won her heart.  We may think we hate him, but it is not true.  And when life has had its way with us, and left us crushed and soiled—­then we come back to him, as—­how shall I say it?—­as to holy church—­no, as pilgrims, penitents, to a shrine ... come back to look for a moment on all that was pure and good ... to weep over all that died so soon....”

Her voice broke.  She thrust aside the piece of wood he had been holding all the time, and sent it clattering to the floor; then grasping his hands, she pressed them to her eyes, and hid her head in his lap.