"Well, that is the reason of my coming here," answered Meek. "You have spoken to my wife?" "Yes." They both went in. The room was warm and cosy, the piano stood open. Had she been playing when Meek knocked at the door? If that were the case, then she could not be as ill as she looked; he longed to examine her chest. Meek was more silent and gloomy than ever that day. "Well," said Kallem, "did you and my wife come to an agreement about Karl?" Meek looked up at him, rather surprised. "Do you mean about writing to him?" "Yes. You know there has been one or other knotty point, as was often the case." "Yes," answered Meek, and remained sitting there quite silent. "Do you imagine I know anything of it? Not I, not a scrap." Meek appeared to be more and more perplexed. "I said to your wife she ought to tell you. It is very good of her not to do so. But the case is serious." His melancholy eyes looked into Kallem's. "Serious, do you call it?" "Yes, I shall be obliged to take him home." Kallem jumped up from his scat. Meek continued: "It is altogether useless, his being there." "But what is wrong? Would you like us to try with him again?" Kallem thought there was a possibility of the youth's having relapsed into his old ways. Meek looked enquiringly at him, almost frightened. "How do you think your wife really is?" he asked. Kallem turned red; it struck him like a shot in the midst of his own secret fears. "She caught a nasty cold which she cannot get rid of; for a while I thought, ... I'll tell you what! Can't you sound her chest?" His own doubts had become certainty, his heart beat so that he would not have been capable of examining her himself. Meek continued to gaze at him and Kallem grew more frightened. "Won't you examine her?" "Yes, of course. Has it not been done recently?" "Not very recently. No. I don't wish to alarm her. Because if her imagination begins to work then there is danger for her. Besides, there was something else ... However, now I will--" he would have gone to fetch her. "Did you know her father?" asked Meek, Kallem shuddered. "Did you?" "Yes, I was doctor to the fisheries up there." "Was he--?" Kallem asked breathlessly and unable to finish his sentence. Meek merely nodded, Kallem clasped his head with both hands, hurried to the door, came back again: "You will examine her now, here, at once?" Kallem led her in tenderly, without giving her time to take off her apron; and carefully brought her up close to the windows. Evidently she had been crying--and those rings under her eyes, her thinness, her colour! She saw his alarm but mistook the cause. Out in the kitchen she had been thinking; now they must be talking about Karl; now Kallem will hear why it is I get no more letters from him. And now that she saw Kallem's agitation she thought, can he be angry because I did not tell him? She could not bear the idea of that, it made her hot and cold by turns.