[A] The peasants in the Dalar district used formerly to address everybody by the pronoun _du_ (thou), even when speaking to the King; this custom is now, however, not so general.--I.B.
'What is your name?' he said. 'Who are you?'
'I am Ingrid, whom you saw at Upsala many years ago, and whom you comforted because she could not learn to dance on the tight-rope.'
This went back to the time he could partly remember. Now he did remember her.
'How tall and pretty you have grown, Ingrid!' he said. 'And how fine you have become! What a beautiful brooch you have!'
He had been looking at her brooch for some time. He thought he knew it; it was like a brooch of enamel and pearls his mother used to wear. The young girl answered at once.
'Your mother gave it to me. You must have seen it before.'
Gunnar Hede put down the violin and went up to Ingrid. He asked her almost violently:
'How is it possible--how can you wear her brooch? How is it that I don't know anything about your knowing my mother?'
Ingrid was frightened. She grew almost gray with terror. She knew already what the next question would be.
'I know nothing, Ingrid. I don't know why I am here. I don't know why you are here. Why don't I know all this?'
She went back a step or two, and stretched out her hands as if to protect herself.
He seized her roughly by the wrist to compel her to tell the truth.
'Tell me! I am in my full senses! Why is there so much I can't remember?'
She saw something wild and threatening in his eyes. She knew now that she would be obliged to tell him. But she felt as if it were impossible to tell a man that he had been mad. It was much more difficult than she had thought. It was impossible--impossible!
But she could hear from his voice that he would not hear it. He was almost ready to kill her if she told him. Then she summoned up all her love, and looked straight into Gunnar Hede's eyes, and said:
'I don't quite know--not for three or four years.'
'No, no! You have bought and sold and gone to the fairs.'
He had stood clutching her by the wrist the whole time. He now flung her hand away from him--simply flung it. He turned away from Ingrid in a rage, as if she had maliciously told him an infamous lie.
But this feeling gave way for something else which excited him still more. He saw before his eyes, as distinctly as if it had been a picture, a tall Dalar man, weighed down by a huge pack. He was going into a peasant's house, but a wretched little dog came rushing at him. He stopped and curtsied and curtsied, and did not dare to go in until a man came out of the house, laughing, and drove the dog away.