She went back a step or two, and stretched out her hands as if to protect herself. 'Won't you tell me?' 'Don't ask! don't ask!' 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! 'Tell me!' he repeated. 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: 'You have not been quite right.' 'Not for a long time?' 'I don't quite know--not for three or four years.' 'Have I been out of my mind?' 'No, no! You have bought and sold and gone to the fairs.' 'In what way have I been mad?' 'You were frightened.' 'Of whom was I frightened?' 'Of animals.' 'Of goats, perhaps?' 'Yes, mostly of goats.' 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. When he saw this he again felt that terrible fear. In this anguish the vision disappeared, but then he heard voices. They shouted and shrieked around him. They laughed. Derision was showered upon him. Worst and loudest were the shrill voices of children. One word, one name came over and over again: it was shouted, shrieked, whispered, wheezed into his ear--'The Goat! the Goat!' And that all meant him, Gunnar Hede. All that he had lived in. He felt in full consciousness the same unspeakable fear he had suffered whilst out of his mind. But now it was not fear for anything outside himself--now he was afraid of himself. 'It was I! it was I!' he said, wringing his hands. The next moment he was kneeling against a low seat. He laid his head down and cried, cried: 'It was I!' He moaned and sobbed. 'It was I!' How could he have courage to bear this thought--a madman, scorned and laughed at by all? 'Ah! let me go mad again!' he said, hitting the seat with his fist. 'This is more than a human being can bear.'