Madam Hermansen was simply speechless when Fru Egholm showed her, with tears, the scars under her eyes and the little spot by the temple where the hair was gone.
"I can't understand you staying another day," she said, when the sufferer stuck fast in a sob.
"Oh, you mustn't talk like that. When you've vowed before the altar...."
"Did _he_ vow before the altar to knock you about like that, eh? Did he say anything about that?"
"No--o." Fru Egholm laughed through her tears, anxious to bring her visitor to a gentler frame of mind. "No, and it would be no more than his deserts if I said I wouldn't live with him any more. But I can't help it; it's not in my nature to do it. And, after all, it's his business how he treats his wife, isn't it? What's it to do with me? I couldn't think of living anywhere but where he is. Love's not a thing you can pull up by the roots all of a sudden.
"'When first the flame of love warms human heart, they little know What harm they do beyond repair who make it cease to glow!'"
"Hymns!" said Madam Hermansen scornfully.
"Ah, but it's just hymns and such that lift us up nearer to God."
"Oh, God's all right, of course, but it doesn't do in this world to leave too much to God."
"It's all we poor sinful mortals have. Where do you suppose I should ever find comfort and solace if I hadn't God to turn to? Why, He's almighty. He's even done things with Egholm at times. When I think of it, I feel ashamed of myself that I ever can sit and complain. Now, just by way of example.... It was the day we came over here from Odense, me and the children. I'd no sooner got out of the train than he puts his arms round me and kisses me right on the cheek. And what's the most marvellous thing about it all--I can't understand it to this day--he did it right in front of three or four girls standing staring at us all the time. Ah, Madam Hermansen, take my word for it, a little thing like that gives you strength to live on for a long time after. And then Egholm's been good to me in other ways. He knows--Lord forgive me that I should say it--that I'm more of a God-fearing sort than he is himself. And--I don't know how to put it--that my God's--well, more genuine, as you might say, than his. I'll tell you how I found that out, Madam Hermansen. You know it was said the end of the world was to come a few years back. It was in all the papers, and Egholm, he took it all in for gospel truth, because he said it agreed with the signs in the Revelations, you know...."