hardly known for two days. If he should come in this
moment, she would tell him what he had done toward her; and her wish
must have been heard, for as she raised her eyes, he stood there at her
side, the sad feature about his mouth and his great honest eyes gazing
wonderingly at her. She felt her purpose melt within her; he looked so
good and so unhappy. Then again came the thought of her father and of
her own wrong, and the bitterness again revived.

"Go away," cried she, in a voice half reluctantly tender and half
defiant. "Go away, I say; I don't want to see you any more."

"I will go to the end of the world if you wish it," he answered, with a
strange firmness.

He picked up his jacket which he had dropped on the ground, then turned
slowly, gave her mother long look, an infinitely sad and hopeless one,
and went. Her bosom heaved violently--remorse, affection and filial duty
wrestled desperately in her heart.

"No, no," she cried, "why do you go? I did not mean it so. I only
wanted--"

He paused and returned as deliberately as he had gone.

Why should I dwell upon the days that followed--how her heart grew ever
more restless, how she would suddenly wake up at nights and see those
large blue eyes sadly gazing at her, how by turns she would condemn
herself and him, and how she felt with bitter pain that she was growing
away from those who had hitherto been nearest and dearest to her. And
strange to say, this very isolation from her father made her cling
only the more desperately to him. It seemed to her as if Bjarne had
deliberately thrown her off; that she herself had been the one who
took the first step had hardly occurred to her. Alas, her grief was as
irrational as her love. By what strange devious process of reasoning
these convictions became settled in her mind, it is difficult to tell.
It is sufficient to know that she was a woman and that she loved. She
even knew herself that she was irrational, and this very sense drew her
more hopelessly into the maze of the labyrinth from which she saw no
escape.

His visits were as regular as those of the sun. She knew that there was
only a word of hers needed to banish him from her presence forever. And
how many times did she not resolve to speak that word? But the word was
never spoken. At times a company of the lads from the valley would come
to spend a merry evening at the saeter; but she heeded them not, and
they soon disappeared. Thus the summer went amid pass