Hedvig thought of all this as she stood at the window. The shadow of a smile passed now and again over her severe red lips. Wonderfully sweet contentment suffused her whole being. She trampled on her old fear, loneliness, and humiliation, and felt as if she had truly her old fear under her foot. But she could not trample it to death. One does not trample a shadow to death. It can only be killed by light....
Then Percy Hill came driving up to the steps. He remained for a moment sitting in the open carriage looking up at the high, gloomy walls of Selambshof. It was impossible for him to escape a feeling of discomfort in the presence of this sham feudal architecture, this suburban gothic which did not even take itself seriously. “Well,” he thought, “we are going away from all this.”
He entered. He moved slowly and looked very pale and thin in his black morning coat. Nobody could help seeing that he had been in the shadow of death. For a moment he seemed to shrink from the wintry air inside. But his glance brightened when he caught sight of Hedvig’s frock. He had been afraid to see her without her nurse’s uniform. Her simple black frock seemed to him an expression of tactfulness. He kissed Hedvig’s hand and greeted Laura and Stellan. Then it was Peter’s turn. Percy had had no communication with him for many years. Peter’s gross figure startled him somewhat. He offered his transparent fingers with half-closed eyes and withdrew them again quickly with a little embarrassed smile.
Nobody said much. Laura pulled her shawl more closely over her shoulders and even Stellan seemed somewhat ill at ease.
Then Hedvig led Percy with an absent-minded expression to the wedding presents which were laid out on a table by the window. There were crystal vases and bowls in the taste of the day—all eloquent of decent, commonplace domestic life. Hedvig walked away. Percy looked at the floor.
“They are all overtaxing my nerves,” he thought. “Such meaningless ugliness!” He had to make a real effort to realise that this was not a deliberate mockery of their marriage, but merely a sacrifice to the conventionalities. At last he began to thank everybody very eagerly and politely to right and left on behalf of himself and Hedvig.