MRS. LYNGGAARD:--A few months later, as I was taking a walk, I was stopped on the street by Olsen's wife. I tell you, the way she looked made my heart shrink within me. Her husband was completely broken down, she told me. And on top of it all he had taken to drink. Everything she and the children could scrape together, he spent on whiskey. She herself was so far gone with her eighth child that she would soon have to quit work.... Then I went home to my husband and begged and prayed him to take Olsen back and make a man of him again. It was the first time during our marriage that I saw him beside himself with rage. There came into his eyes such an evil expression that I wish I had never seen it, for I have never since been able to forget it entirely. But, of course, I guessed who was back of it. (_With emphasis._) Then I did the most humiliating thing I have ever done: I went in secret to Heymann and pleaded for that discharged workman. MIKKELSEN:--Well, and Heymann? MRS. LYNGGAARD:--Since that moment I hate Heymann. There I was, humbling myself before him. And he measured me with cold eyes and said: "If I am to be in charge of this plant, madam, I must ask once for all and absolutely, that no outsiders interfere with the running of it." MIKKELSEN:--I don't see that he could have done anything else. MRS. LYNGGAARD:--What I cannot forgive myself is that I let myself be imposed upon by that man. I behaved like a coward. At that moment I should have gone to my husband and said: "This is what has happened--now you must choose between Heymann and me!" But I was so cowardly, that I didn't even tell my husband what I had done. MIKKELSEN:--Nor was it proper for you to go behind your husband's back like that. MRS. LYNGGAARD (_with an expression of abject horror in her fixed gaze_):--A little afterwards this thing happened. It was one of the first warm summer days, and I was walking in the garden with Jacob. At that time a splendid old chestnut tree was growing in one corner. And there, in the midst of green leaves, and singing birds, Olsen was hanging, cold and dead. And the flies were crawling in and out of his face.... (_She trembles visibly._) MIKKELSEN:--Yes, life is cruel. MRS. LYNGGAARD:--And there I perceived for the first time how utterly poor a human being may become. Anything so pitiful and miserable I had never seen before. There was no sign of underclothing between his trousers and the vest. And I don't know why, but it seemed almost as if this was what hurt me most--much more than that he had hanged himself.... And since that day I haven't known a single hour of happiness. My Religion BY LEO TOLSTOY (From an essay in which the Russian novelist and reformer, 1828-1910, has set forth the creed by which he lived)