He did not help her to rise at once. Instead, he laid one hand on either shoulder, and bent over her, his face almost touching her. "You helped me once," he said, "when I was in my sorest need. Do you not think I should be glad to repay you that a thousand times, if it were in my power?" Suddenly he checked himself, and, regaining calmness, moved quietly away from her and drew up a chair. "Will you not tell me how all this came about?" She stood up beside him, and began hesitatingly: "There is so much to say. I hardly know how to begin." For a moment she was on the point of giving way to tears, but restrained herself. "We were not very happy in our marriage, my husband and I." He did not seem to notice that she was standing while he was seated. But he understood that she needed help to tell her story. "My wife was not happy either," he said. He rested one elbow on the table and leaned forward so as to cover his eyes. Sigrun understood that he was encouraging her to go on. "There's been talk about us here and there, I dare say," she continued. "If you were in Algeröd yesterday, no doubt you heard about the scene with the man who was staying with us...." "Yes," he said, "I heard that and more. But there was no ill-will in what was said. Only sorrow--nothing but sorrow." His voice was almost a sob. He felt the old fierce pain once more. It hurt him beyond words to speak to her like this, when his one desire was to lay his head in her lap and tell her of the sorrow that had racked him the day before and the misery of this morning, when he learned that his wife had come back now--now that his heart longed only to be left to its sorrow for another. "And no one doubted that I was dead?" asked Sigrun. "No," he said. "No one doubted that you had died of the smallpox." She grasped his arm hastily. "You--you do not know who it was that died. It must have been ..." She stopped, with open mouth, not daring to go on. "Was it my wife?" he asked. "Yes," she said. "I think it must have been ... your wife." Sven Elversson said nothing, but rose and walked across the room. Now Sigrun in her turn sank down on a chair. "Death," she thought--"Death will not let me go. I had forgotten that the dead woman was Sven Elversson's wife when I asked him to help me." She sat crying quietly, and pulling at a handkerchief. The eerie, drowsy, death-like feeling came over her again. A few moments later, Sven Elversson came back to the table and sat down in the same position as before. "Now tell me everything," he said. And she obeyed. She told him all that had passed from the moment when the strange woman had come to her door, until now, when she herself sat in the vagabonds' hostel at Hånger.