He held his breath a moment. The darkness came towards him as the saviour he invoked. It came gliding towards him like a mist. A smile passed over his lips. He could feel the muscles of his face relax, feel that he again had the look of a madman. But that was better. The other he could not bear. To be pointed at, jeered at, scorned, mad! No, it was better to be so again and not to know it. Why should he come back to life? Everyone must loathe him. The first light, fleeting clouds of the great darkness began to enwrap him. Ingrid stood there, seeing and hearing all his anguish, not knowing but that all would soon be lost again. She saw clearly that madness was again about to seize him. She was so frightened, so frightened, all her courage had gone. But before he again lost his senses, and became so scared that he allowed no one to come near him, she would at least take leave of him and of all her happiness. Gunnar Hede felt that Ingrid came and knelt down beside him, laid her arm round his neck, put her cheek to his, and kissed him. She did not think herself too good to come near him, the madman, did not think herself too good to kiss him. There was a faint hissing in the darkness. The mist lifted, and it was as if serpents had raised their heads against him, and now wheezed with anger that they could not reach to sting him. 'Do not be so unhappy,' Ingrid said. 'Do not be so unhappy. No one thinks of the past, if you will only get well.' 'I want to be mad again,' he said. 'I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to think how I have been.' 'Yes, you can,' said Ingrid. 'No; that no one can forget,' he moaned. 'I was so dreadful! No one can love me.' 'I love you,' she said. He looked up doubtfully. 'You kissed me in order that I should not go out of my mind again. You pity me.' 'I will kiss you again,' she said. 'You say that now because you think I am in need of hearing it.' 'Are you in need of hearing that someone loves you?' 'If I am--if I am? Ah, child,' he said, and tore himself away from her, 'how can I possibly bear it, when I know that everyone who sees me thinks: "That fellow has been mad; he has gone about curtsying for dogs and cats."' Then he began again. He lay crying with his face in his hands. 'It is better to go out of one's mind again. I can hear them shouting after me, and I see myself, and the anguish, the anguish, the anguish----' But then Ingrid's patience came to an end. 'Yes, that is right,' she cried; 'go out of your mind again. I call that manly to go mad in order to escape a little anguish.' She sat biting her lips, struggling with her tears, and as she could not get the words out quickly enough, she seized him by the shoulder and shook him. She was enraged and quite beside herself with anger because he would again escape her, because he did not struggle and fight.