We went down to a bench, looking like a father and daughter out walking. There was nothing striking about us, and we sat the whole evening undisturbed. Later we sat undisturbed on other evenings all through a cold autumn month. Then she told me first the short chapter of her journey home, some of it only hinted, suggested, and some of it in full; sometimes with her head deeply bowed, sometimes, when I asked a question, replying by a brief word or a shake of the head. I write it down from memory; it was important to her, and it became important for others as well. Besides--in a hundred years it will all be forgotten. Why do we struggle? In a hundred years someone will read about it in memoirs and letters and think: "How she wriggled, how she fussed--dear me!" There are others about whom nothing at all will be written or read; life will close over them like a grave. Either way.... What sorrows she had--dear, dear, what sorrows! The day she had been unable to pay the bill, she thought herself the center of the universe; everybody stared at her, and she was at her wits' end. Then she heard a man's voice outside saying: "Haven't you watered Blakka yet?" That was _his_ preoccupation. So she was not the center of the universe after all. Then she and her companion had left the house, and set out on their tour. The center? Not at all. Day after day they walked across fields, and through valleys, had meals in houses by the way, and water from the brooks. If they met other travelers, they greeted them, or they did not greet them; no one was less a center of attention than they, and no one more. Her companion walked in vacant thoughtlessness, whistling as he went. At one place they stopped for food. "Will you pay for mine for the time being?" he said. She hesitated and then said briefly that she could not pay "for the time being" all the way. "Of course not, by no means," said he. "Just for the moment. Perhaps we can get a loan further down the valley." "I don't borrow." "Ingeborg!" said he, pretending playfully to whimper. "What is it?" "Nothing. Can't I say 'Ingeborg' to my own wife?" "I'm not your own wife," she said, getting up. "Pish! We were man and wife last night. It says so in the visitors' book." She was silent at this. Yes, last night they had been man and wife; that was to save getting two rooms, and travel economically. But she had been very foolish to agree to it. "'Miss Torsen,' then?" he whimpered. And to put an end to the game, she paid for both of them and took her knapsack on her back. They walked again. At the next stop she paid for them both without discussion--for the evening meal, for bed and breakfast. It grew to be a habit. They walked on once more. They reached the end of the valley by the sea, and here she revolted again. "Go away--go on by yourself; I don't want you in my room any more!"