They were poor, very poor; Ragna did the best she could in restricting expense, but the bills crept up in spite of her, and Egidio's reproaches for her extravagance hurt her bitterly. Was all her life to be a failure, she wondered drearily? She had always acted for the best, she told herself; she had only consented to marry because Egidio had begged her to, and on her child's account, and now all was misery. She could see from day to day her husband's affection for the child slowly waning. What would become of them all? In these reflections she did not dare to be quite honest with herself,--she had acted for the best, yes, but as others saw it for her, she had lacked the courage to be true to herself, to her instinct. So, because she had gone counter to her nature, because she had denied the essential truth in her soul, and surrendered her life to the guidance of others, in giving to her motherhood the shield of what she expected to be but an empty social contract, a sham, she had sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. Even the love of her child, which should have been her consolation, was to become as dust and ashes in her mouth. It seemed cruel, as she did not err consciously, and it was not her fault if the arguments with which society and custom supplied her, proved specious. But she was not one who could live on the surface, buoyed up by a succession of more or less agreeable occurrences and material facts, therefore the Law, the first commandment of which is, "This above all, to thine own self be true," bore heavily on her. She grew desperate, and driven by Egidio's moodiness and fits of temper, finally wrote to her father begging him for help, announcing herself about to become a mother, and giving as an excuse for her appeal her husband's extraordinary ill luck and the extra expense occasioned by her condition. Lars Andersen replied affectionately. His daughter's marriage had been a grief to him, and his national pride had been hurt that she should have preferred a foreigner to one of her own countrymen, but except for that she had become almost a stranger to him. The years she had spent at school and with her Aunt Gitta had taken her out of his life, and the knowledge that by her choice of a husband she had definitely separated herself from her own family and country had brought no such sharp pang to him as it had to her mother and to her aunt. He wrote that he was sorry not to be able to do more for her, his limited income being barely sufficient for home needs, and that she must take the will for the deed.