Just then someone entered the room. But Sigrun did not move. It was utterly indifferent to her now, whoever saw her. Her decision was taken, and she knew what she had to do. She lay still bowed over the table with her face in her hands, and could not see who had come in. The step, however, told her that it was a man, and not an old, but a young man. "It is Sven Elversson himself," she thought. She heard him approaching her at first; then he drew back. He went to the stove, lit a fire there, and returned to the table where she sat. "Is it so hard for you, Ruth?" he said. "Let me send some of the children to you. Is there nothing here that you might be glad to see again?" At these words she raised her head, and turned toward him, with a look of fixed despair. "I am not the one you thought to see," she said. "I am Sigrun Rhånge, wife of the vicar of Algeröd." Sven Elversson drew back a step or two. But he had so trained himself to preserve the same calm, whatever news might be brought him, that he did not even utter a cry. Only his face turned pale. But his confusion was evident from the fact that he began thinking aloud. "Sigrun Rhånge is dead," he said. "She died the night before last. When I heard she was dead, I went to Algeröd myself, to see her once more for the last time, but it was too late. She was already laid in her coffin and buried in her grave." Sigrun sat gazing at him. There was a solemnity of grief in his words that almost touched her. She was convinced that he was unaware of having spoken aloud. "Would it were so," she said in answer to his thought. "Would that Sigrun Rhånge were truly dead and in her grave." "Sigrun Rhånge is dead," he repeated in a low, monotonous voice, still unable to collect himself. "I shall never see her again on earth." "Yes," she agreed. "We may surely say that Sigrun Rhånge is dead. But I, unhappy creature that I am, I am living yet." Something within him seemed to grasp the inner meaning of all this quicker than thought, and set his heart in fierce commotion. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes glittered. He came toward her, took her hand and held it in one of his, while the other stroked her cheek with a swift, momentary touch. He seemed trying to convince himself that it was indeed a living woman here before him. "You, alive!" he said, and his voice rose to a cry of joy, only to sink next moment to a low, gentle tone. "You here, in my house! What does it mean?" There was much in his manner that astonished her. But at the same time, it gave her a little courage. Here at least was one who did not look on her misfortune with cold indifference. "You wrote so kindly to your wife this morning," she said. "And I have always heard so much good of you. Will you help me now? I am in the greatest need that ever any could be." The tears flowed from her eyes. And in her extremity, her desperate need of help, she threw herself on her knees before him.