"My friend, were I now to tell you all I feel of gratitude and admiration for you, you would not understand it; it has seemed so natural to you that all the happiness of your life came from me. And that was what was most beautiful in mine too. "But you will not read this until the day when I no longer am sitting in this chair, and nothing can imprint my memory so vividly on you and make it live on in you, as one long, everlasting: "Thanks." And this was the marriage they had considered not worthy of the name! What was Josephine's compared to this! She slipped from the chair down upon her knees. She wept and sobbed--and forced herself to silence that no one might discover her crouching there in the shame of her crime. She folded her hands on Ragni's letter, and laid her head down on them, whispering: "Forgive me, forgive me!" though she knew that none could hear her, and that none, none could forgive her. In a moment, she understood that Ragni had been pure in her first marriage; and that there too she had been slandered! The papers telling how this marriage had been arranged--she did not need to read them, she could not. With clammy hands she collected all the papers together, Ole must read them. Now he must help her; her life was at stake. She had committed murder, the murder of an innocent person. Not by her words or prompting, for she had said nothing. But it was just her silence, and her having that very first day repelled Ragni--just on that account the poor thing had been hopelessly lost; this all flashed through her mind like lightning; she lay there like one deaf and paralysed. The doom she had read in her brother's eyes, the death-doom--and she had not been mistaken, it was not intended for her son, it was intended for herself. She deserved death! She was seized with horror, a cold sweat broke out over her like a stunning blow--now it was at hand! Yes, now it was at hand! She had thought all was over when her boy was well again; but no, now it had come, now that she had regained her happiness in her husband and a firm footing altogether--now it overtook and aimed a deadly blow at her. She hurried down to the study whilst Tuft was still at his supper and put the envelope on his desk; she had on her hat and a shawl, and now she ran rather than walked toward her brother's house; now it must break or bend.