By that time he had already opened the letter and was scanning it.  She put her hand over the paper.  “Listen to me, Ingmar!” she said.  “It was the chaplain who got me to write that letter, and he promised not to send it till I was on board the steamer.  Instead he sent it off too soon.  You have no right to read it yet; wait till I’m gone, Ingmar.”

Ingmar gave her an angry look and jumped out of the wagon, so that he might read the letter in peace.  Brita was as much excited now as she had been in the old days, when things did not go her way.

“What I say in that letter isn’t true.  The chaplain talked me into writing it.  I don’t love you, Ingmar.”

He looked up from the paper and gazed at her in astonishment.  Then she grew silent, and the lessons in humility which she had learned in prison profited her now.  After all she suffered no greater embarrassment than she deserved.

Ingmar, meanwhile, stood puzzling over the letter.  Suddenly, with an impatient snarl, he crumpled it up.

“I can’t make this out!” he said, stamping his foot.  “My head’s all in a muddle.”

He went up to Brita and gripped her by the arm.

“Does it really say in the letter that you care for me?” His tone was shockingly brutal, and the look of him was terrible.

Brita was silent.

“Does the letter say that you care for me?” he repeated savagely.

“Yes,” she answered faintly.

Then his face became horribly distorted.  He shook her arm and thrust it from him.  “How you can lie!” he said, with a hoarse and angry laugh.  “How you can lie!”

“God knows I have prayed night and day that I might see you again before I go!” she solemnly avowed.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to America, of course.”

“The hell you are!”

Ingmar was beside himself.  He staggered a few steps into the woods and cast himself upon the ground.  And now it was his turn to weep!

Brita followed him and sat down beside him, she was so happy that she wanted to shout.

“Ingmar, little Ingmar!” she said, calling him by his pet name.

“But you think I’m so ugly!” he returned.

“Of course I do.”

Ingmar pushed her hand away.

“Now let me tell you something,” said Brita.

“Tell away.”

“Do you remember what you said in court three years ago?”

“I do.”

“That if I could only get to think differently of you, you would marry me?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“It was after that I began to care for you.  I had never imagined that any mortal could say such a thing.  It seemed almost unbelievable your saying it to me, after all I had done to you.  As I saw you that day, I thought you better looking than all the others, and you were wiser than any of them, and the only one with whom it would be good to share one’s life.  I fell so deeply in love with you that it seemed as if you belonged to me, and I to you.  At first I took it for granted that you would come and fetch me, but later I hardly dared think it.”