“I think you’d better go inside at once, Brita,” he suggested.

“Why, certainly,” she answered.  To attend service was her only thought; she had not come there to meet people.

Ingmar took his own time unharnessing and feeding the horse.  Many eyes were fixed upon him, but nobody spoke to him.  By the time he was ready to go into the church, most of the people were already in their pews, and the opening hymn was being sung.  Walking down the centre isle, he glanced over at the side where the women were seated.  All the pews were filled save one, and in that there was only one person.  He saw at once that it was Brita and knew, of course, that no one had cared to sit with her.  Ingmar went and sat down beside her.  Brita looked up at him in wonderment.  She had not noticed it before, but now she understood why she had the pew to herself.  Then the deep feeling of devotion, which she had but just experienced, was dispelled by a sense of black despair.  “How would it all end?” she wondered.  She should never have come with him.

Her eyes began to fill.  To keep from breaking down she took up an old prayerbook from the shelf in front of her, and opened it.  She kept turning the leaves of both gospels and epistles without being able to see a word for the tears.  Suddenly something bright caught her eye.  It was a bookmark, with a red heart, which lay between the leaves.  She took it out and slipped it toward Ingmar.  She saw him close his big hand over it and steal a glance at it.  Shortly afterward it lay upon the floor.  “What is to become of us?” thought Brita, sobbing behind the prayerbook.

As soon as the preacher had stepped down from the pulpit they went out.  Ingmar hurriedly hitched up the horse, with Brita’s help.  By the time the benediction was pronounced and the congregation was beginning to file out, Brita and Ingmar were already off.  Both seemed to be thinking the same thought:  one who has committed such a crime cannot live among people.  The two fell as if they had been doing penance by appearing at church.  “Neither of us will be able to stand it,” they thought.

In the midst of her distress of mind, Brita caught a glimpse of the Ingmar Farm, and hardly knew it again.  It looked so bright and red.  She remembered having heard that the house was to be painted the year Ingmar married.  Before, the wedding had been put off because he had felt that he could not afford to pay out any money just then.  Now she understood that he had always meant to have everything right; but the way had been made rather hard for him.

When they arrived at the farm the folks were at dinner.  “Here comes the boss,” said one of the men, looking out.  Mother Martha got up from the table, scarcely lifting her heavy eyelids.  “Stay where you are, all of you!” she commanded.  “No one need rise from the table.”

The old woman walked heavily across the room.  Those who turned to look after her noticed that she had on her best dress, with her silk shawl across her shoulders, and her silk kerchief on her head, as if to emphasize her authority.  When the horse stopped she was already at the door.