Everything was laid waste. The bold lines had become coarse and heavy.
They were not few who mourned over Marianne Sinclair’s lost beauty. In the whole of Värmland, people lamented the change in her bright color, her sparkling eyes, and blond hair. There beauty was prized as nowhere else. The joyous people grieved, as if the country had lost a precious stone from the crown of its honor, as if their life had received a blot on its glory.
But the first man who saw her after she had lost her beauty did not indulge in sorrow.
Unutterable emotion filled his soul. The more he looked at her, the warmer it grew within him. Love grew and grew, like a river in the spring. In waves of fire it welled up in his heart, it filled his whole being, it rose to his eyes as tears; it sighed on his lips, trembled in his hands, in his whole body.
Oh, to love her, to protect her, to keep her from all harm!
Love is strong when it has gone through the baptismal fire of pain. He could not speak to Marianne of parting and renunciation. He could not leave her—he owed her his life. He could commit the unpardonable sin for her sake.
He could not speak a coherent word, he only wept and kissed, until at last the old nurse thought it was time to lead him out.
When he had gone, Marianne lay and thought of him and his emotion. “It is good to be so loved,” she thought.
Yes, it was good to be loved, but how was it with herself? What did she feel? Oh, nothing, less than nothing!
Was it dead, her love, or where had it taken flight? Where had it hidden itself, her heart’s child?
Did it still live? Had it crept into her heart’s darkest corner and sat there freezing under the icy eyes, frightened by the pale sneer, half suffocated under the bony fingers?
“Ah, my love,” she sighed, “child of my heart! Are you alive, or are you dead, dead as my beauty?”
The next day Melchior Sinclair went in early to his wife.
“See to it that there is order in the house again, Gustava!” he said. “I am going to bring Marianne home.”
“Yes, dear Melchior, here there will of course be order,” she answered.
An hour afterwards he was on his way to Ekeby.
It was impossible to find a more noble and kindly old gentleman than Melchior Sinclair, as he sat in the open sledge in his best fur cloak and his best rug. His hair lay smooth on his head, but his face was pale and his eyes were sunken in their sockets.