AT Nonneseter the days went by as before. Kristin’s time was passed between the dormitory and the church, the weaving-room, the book-hall and the refectory. The nuns and the convent folk gathered in the pot-herbs and the fruits from the herb-garden and the orchard; Holy Cross Day came in the autumn with the procession, then there was the fast before Michaelmas—Kristin wondered—none seemed to mark any change in her. But she had ever been quiet when amongst strangers, and Ingebjörg Filippusdatter, who was by her night and day, was well able to chatter for them both. Thus no one marked that her thoughts were far away from all around her. Erlend’s paramour—she said to herself, she was Erlend’s paramour now. It seemed now as though she had dreamed it all—the eve of St. Margaret’s Mass, that hour in the barn, the nights in her bower at Skog—either she had dreamed it, or else all about her now was a dream. But one day she must waken, one day it must all come out. Not for a moment did she think aught else than that she bore Erlend’s child within her— But what would happen to her when this came to light she could not well think. Would she be put into the black hole, or be sent home—She saw dim pictures of her father and mother far away—Then she shut her eyes, dizzy and sick, bowed in fancy beneath the coming storm and tried to harden herself to bear it since she thought it must end by sweeping her for ever into Erlend’s arms—the only place where now she felt she had a home. Thus was there in this strained waiting as much of hope as terror, as much of sweetness as of torment. She was unhappy—but she felt her love for Erlend as it were a flower planted within her—and, spite of her unhappiness, it put forth fresher and richer blooms each day. That last night when he had slept by her side she had felt, as a faint and fleeting bliss, that there awaited her a joy and happiness in his arms such as she had not yet known—she thrilled now at the thought of it; it came to her like warm, spicy breaths from sun-heated gardens. Wayside brat—Inga had flung the word at her—she opened her arms to it and pressed it to her bosom. Wayside brat, was the name they gave to the child begotten in secret in woods or fields. She felt the sunshine and the smell of the pines in the forest pasture. Each new, creeping tremor, each sudden pulse-beat in her body she took as a reminder from the unborn babe that now she was come out into new paths—and were they never so hard to follow to the end, she was sure they must lead to Erlend at the last.