Something must have happened: for several days Fru Rendalen had gone about with red eyes, and he himself had been away, probably to Christiania. Anna came forward and thanked him for his lecture in her own _prétentieuse_ manner; after he had gone, she said it was the best she had heard. Only one person agreed with her, and that was Miss Hall; the others said nothing, there was a painful silence. At last some one said that the lecture appeared to her to be terribly violent. Little Anna replied that people must be roused, everything was made into an _amusement_. There was too much of that in the Society itself. This caused still greater discord; Nora was annoyed, and asked if Anna would not in that case do something to help it. Anna coloured, but to every one's astonishment she replied: "Yes, she would try." She disappeared from school for several days; but she announced that she would give a lecture at the next meeting. She wished that Rendalen, Fru Rendalen, and Karl Vangen should hear it; this was certainly not hiding her light under a bushel, her companions thought. Of course the invited guests came. When little Anna arrived she looked overstrung, her hands trembled as her thin fingers turned the pages of her manuscript and arranged the lights on the tribune. Her voice and delivery were measured, sometimes almost sharp; she did not often raise her large eyes, but when she did so it was with a significance which was most irritating. She read her lecture--the opening was especially pointed: "Woman does not labour to improve herself in the same degree that she expects man to do. She does not lay aside the failings which she acquired when in another and worse position. I will this evening mention one fault--lying. In her position as the weaker, woman has accustomed herself to lying, but she is no longer so defenceless as to need this. Thus I consider that in making herself appear so gentle, so pious, so modest, so lovable before strangers, even if only one is present, she lies. It is the same thing when, a straight course being disagreeable to her, she at once takes a crooked one; she gives a false reason, she makes excuses. If there is anything to be done which has grown distasteful she pleads a headache; if any one calls whom she does not wish to see, she is 'out,' though she is sitting in the parlour. It does not disturb her in the least to make her servant, her daughter, or her friend lie for her when she cannot do so herself. "Some ladies, possibly a large proportion, have so accustomed themselves to giving untrue reasons, or to concealing the real ones, to making up excuses, that they do it without any necessity; they delight in it as in a kind of coquetry.