"'Look at your hair--sticking out all round your head like a wild bush.' "And I sat still and let them go on. 'If it was only that,' I thought to myself. 'But it's because Sigrun is from another world, and that's worse than all the rest.' "'And such a figure you've got,' said the others. 'No shape at all. You can never get your clothes to sit properly like others do. And your eyes are sharp and hard, and you've a voice like a raven....' "Now I hadn't been crying before, but then I felt the tears coming, because the others were all so harsh and unkind, when they tried to comfort me. "But then all of a sudden it seemed as if a warm, gentle light filled the air in front of me--like sunlight in a room on a cold winter's day. "A cool, soft hand drew my hands away from my face, and when I looked up it was Sigrun standing there, and smiling at me, and asking if I would row her across in my boat later on, when we had finished lessons for the day. "And though I knew that the others must have told her that I was only a poor girl, and always ill besides; though I knew it was only for pity's sake she asked me, still I felt so happy, so happy. Oh, you can never understand how wonderful it was to feel, and I loved her from that moment." "And I loved her from that moment," repeated the listener to himself, and felt once more the touch of a woman's lips on his face, and a little merry laugh. "Though I knew it was only for pity's sake," he whispered to himself--"though I knew well it was only for pity's sake. "Sigrun," he murmured half aloud, "why should you come back to me like this to-day? I thought I had sent you away for ever. Why do you come back now?" Lotta Hedman went on with her story. "But that afternoon, when we were rowing across, she asked me, Sigrun, if it was I that had heard the wonderful music in the Deanery on the day of the funeral, and asked me to tell her all about it. And I told her that and more. All the other things I had seen and heard, I told her everything, and told her, too, that I believed I was to be a seer and a prophet of God. And she did not laugh at me. Only said quite humbly that she never saw such things herself, but her dearest wish was to be a nurse. Not for ordinary people, ill with this or that, but for those stricken by the plague, or leprosy. Or if that could not be done, then she would go and care for witless folk, or teach the blind to read or deaf-mutes to talk. Her greatest sorrow, she said, was that she feared her father and mother would not let her go away to such work. "I can remember even now," said Lotta Hedman, "how beautiful she was when she spoke of that." The man sitting opposite looked up a moment, and his eyes shone. "Your story is a great delight to me," he said. "Far more than you know." "It is very good of you to say so," said Lotta Hedman. "I thought you would have been tired of it long ago."