"Oh, no, Fru Bjork!" she cried. "It is quite right that you should go! I would not think of letting you stay, I would not indeed! I shall soon get well under Dr. Ferrati's care, and you will see me back in Christiania before you think,"--her heart failed her with the last words, but she said them boldly. "Dear Fru Bjork, you have been so very, very kind to me, and I would not, for worlds, keep you now, when it is your duty to go. Astrid must go to Edvard at once, and she can't go alone." "Do you really think that, Ragna? Are you quite sure, child, that you don't so very much mind being left alone?" "But I shan't be alone. I shall be with the Signora Ferrati, and you know how pleasant and kind she is! Really, I don't mind at all.--I am only sorry at parting with you and Astrid, even if only for a short time!" "I wish it could have been helped," said Fru Bjork regretfully. "I don't like at all leaving you in this way, but as you say, it seems that it must be so.--Well, good-bye my dear, I am glad you have the Ferratis anyway--do whatever they advise, and be sure you let me know how you get on. Good-bye!--Ragna, dear, it does grieve me to leave you!" She kissed the girl in her motherly way, and followed Astrid to the door; as she went out, she turned once again to wave her plump hand to the pale girl lying on the bed, and the door closed behind her. BOOK III CHAPTER I Ragna sat at the window of a little apartment overlooking the Piazza S. Spirito. The day was hot and the green Venetian shutters left the room in a refreshing dusk very grateful in comparison to the glare of sunshine outside, beating pitilessly on the light walls of the houses across the square and vibrating in waves of heat over the stunted palms in the garden below. In a shady corner a water-seller who had set up his little stand, gay with bottles and coloured glasses and was languidly chaffing a _facchino_ who had come to refresh himself with a glass of lemonade. The vendor of watermelons, whose stand nearly touched that of the acquaiolo, had gone to sleep under his lurid sign of firemen rushing to extinguish the fire simulated by a glorious red melon the size of a house. Flies droned in the stillness and the girl fanned herself languidly. The room where she sat was furnished in the usual shabby-genteel style of the furnished apartment. A table with a cheap tapestry cover on which stood a glass lamp and a folding case of books occupied the middle of the room; about it were ranged a few poorly carved chairs in the Florentine style. A sofa appeared to lean against the stencilled wall and over it hung a miserable bituminous copy of the Madonna della Seggiola, in a scaling gilt frame. A wooden shelf along one wall supported two vases of dried grasses and paper flowers and a few photographs. There were also yellowed prints of Garibaldi, King Umberto, Queen Margherita and Vittorio Emanuele II.