If he had only been merciful and at once killed her hope.  She loved him so then.  If he of his own accord had told her everything, there would never have been any sting in her soul against him.  But when he saw her pain at being deceived, and yet went on misleading her, that had hurt her too bitterly.  She had never really forgiven him that.  She could of course say to herself that he had wanted to take her with him as far as possible so that she would not be able to run away from him, but his deceit created such a deadly coldness in her that no love could entirely thaw it.

They went through the town and came out on the adjoining plain.  There stretched several rows of dark moats and high, green ramparts, remains from the time when the town had been fortified, and at the point where they all gathered around a fort, she saw some ancient buildings and big, round towers.  She cast a shy look towards them, but Boerje turned off to the mounds which followed the shore.

“This is a shorter way,” he said, for she seemed to be surprised that there was only a narrow path to follow.

He had become very taciturn.  She understood afterwards that he had not found it so merry as he had fancied, to come with a wife to the miserable little house in the fishing village.  It did not seem so fine now to bring home a better man’s child.  He was anxious about what she would do when she should know the truth.

“Boerje,” she said at last, when they had followed the shelving, sandy hillocks for a long while, “where are we going?”

He lifted his band and pointed towards the fishing-village, where his mother lived in the house on the sand-hill.  But she believed that he meant one of the beautiful country-seats which lay on the edge of the plain, and was again glad.

They climbed down into the empty cow-pastures, and there all her uneasiness returned.  There, where every tuft, if one can only see it, is clothed with beauty and variety, she saw merely an ugly field.  And the wind, which is ever shifting there, swept whistling by them and whispered of misfortune and treachery.

Boerje walked faster and faster, and at last they reached the end of the pasture and entered the fishing village.  She, who at the last had not dared to ask herself any questions, took courage again.  Here again was a uniform row of houses, and this one she recognized Even better than that in the town.  Perhaps, perhaps he had not lied.

Her expectations were so reduced that she would have been glad from the heart if she could have stopped at any of the neat little houses, where flowers and white curtains showed behind shining window-panes.  She grieved that she had to go by them.

Then she saw suddenly, just at the outer edge of the fishing-village, one of the most wretched of hovels, and it seemed to her as if she had already seen it with her mind’s eye before she actually had a glimpse of it.