Every one wearies at last of trying to solve even the most interesting of enigmas.  No one could tolerate the sound of her name when, four months after her marriage, she was seen in a stall at the Christiania Theatre just as in old days, though looking perhaps a little paler.  Every opera-glass was levelled at her.  She wore a light, almost white, dress, cut square as usual.  She did not hide her face behind her fan.  She looked about her with her wondering eyes, as though she was quite unconscious that there were other people in the theatre or that any one could be looking at her.  Even the most pertinacious were forced to concede that she was both physically and mentally unique, with a charm all her own.

But just as she had become once more the subject of general conversation, she disappeared.  It afterwards transpired that her husband had fetched her away, though hardly any one had seen him.  It was concluded that they must have had their first quarrel over it.

Accurate information about their joint life was never obtained.  The attempts of her relations to force themselves upon them were quite without result, except that they found out that she was enceinte, notwithstanding her utmost efforts to conceal the fact.

She sent neither letter nor announcement; but in the summer, when she was next seen in Christiania, she was wheeling a perambulator along Karl Johan Street, her eyes as wondering as though some one had just put it between her hands.  She looked handsomer and more blooming than ever.

In the perambulator lay a boy with his mother’s broad forehead, his mother’s red hair.  The child was charmingly dressed, and he, as well as the perambulator, was so daintily equipped, so completely in harmony with herself, that every one understood the reply that she gave, when, after the usual congratulations, her acquaintances inquired, “Shall we soon have a new story from you?”—­she answered, “A new story?  Here it is!”

But, notwithstanding the unalloyed happiness which she displayed here, it could no longer be concealed that more often than not she was absent from home, and that she never mentioned her husband’s name.  If any one spoke of him to her, she changed the subject.  By the time that the boy was a year old, it had become evident that she contemplated leaving Hellebergene entirely.  She had been in Christiania for some time and had gone home to make arrangements, saying that she should come back in a few days.

But she never did so.

The day after her return home, while the numerous servants at Hellebergene, as well as the labourers with their wives and children, were all assembled at the potato digging, Harald Kaas appeared, carrying his wife under his left arm like a sack.  He held her round the waist, feet first, her face downwards and hidden by her hair, her hands convulsively clutching his left thigh, her legs sometimes hanging down, sometimes straight out.  He walked composedly out with her,