Just as she was ready to open, she heard the pitapat of little Nanna's steps on the bridge from the bank. Mary tore the door open; the child came rushing in, hid her head in her mistress's dress, and cried and sobbed so that she could not utter a word. Mary managed to soothe her, principally by promising that she should be allowed to dress her hair. Then Nanna told that before she had noticed anything, Mr. Thiis was standing behind the stone. She had been sitting singing and had not heard him. He made threatening signs to her. Oh, how frightened she had been--for he looked so dreadful! oh, so dreadful! The moment Mary went into the house, he had rushed straight towards it. "Jörgen Thiis?" "Then I screamed as loud as I could scream! _That_ stopped him. He turned and was coming back to me, but I jumped off the stone and ran into the wood----" Here words failed her; she hid her face in Mary's skirts again and sobbed. This was worse than ever! Mary at first felt totally unable to comprehend. Then it gradually dawned upon her that Jörgen must be another man than she took him for--that he had violent passions--that he had the daring to act with utter recklessness. What if he had come...? Conscious of her pride and strength, she knew that it would have meant banishment for ever--impossibly anything else. On the way home she had to send Nanna on in front, because she herself felt hardly able to set one foot before the other, so overpowering were her thoughts. How could a man control himself in daily intercourse when he was possessed by such passionate desire? It must have been accumulating for ages, or he would never have succumbed to this assault upon himself, or made this assault upon her. Had he been burning with desire all these years? His homage, his respect, his unwearying attention--was it all smoke from the subterranean crater, which had now suddenly ejected red-hot stones and ashes? So Jörgen Thiis was dangerous? He did not lose by this in Mary's estimation; he gained! It was praiseworthy, the compulsion which he had exercised over himself--from reverence for her. Ought she to be so angry with him because temptation had set loose the rebellious powers which he had chained?