“Years have gone by since then. I still sit many times In the old place, when the night is dark and silent. But I tremble when the moon shines on the leafy veranda, For her who alone knows how often I kissed my darling there, For her who blended her quivering light with my tears, Which fell on my darling’s hair. Alas, for memory’s pain! Oh, ’tis the grief of my poor, sinful soul That it should be her home! What punishment may he not await Who has bound to himself a soul so pure, so innocent.” “Gösta,” says Anna, jestingly, while her throat contracts with pain, “people say of you that you have lived through more poems than others have written, who have not done anything else all their lives; but do you know, you will do best to compose poems your own way. That was night work.” “You are not kind.” “To come and read such a thing, on death and suffering—you ought to be ashamed!” Gösta is not listening to her. His eyes are fixed on the young countess. She sits quite stiff, motionless as a statue. He thinks she is going to faint. But with infinite difficulty her lips form one word. “Go!” she says. “Who shall go? Shall _I_ go?” “The priest shall go,” she stammers out. “Elizabeth, be silent!” “The drunken priest shall leave my house!” “Anna, Anna,” Gösta asks, “what does she mean?” “You had better go, Gösta.” “Why shall I go? What does all this mean?” “Anna,” says Countess Elizabeth, “tell him, tell him!” “No, countess, tell him yourself!” The countess sets her teeth, and masters her emotion. “Herr Berling,” she says, and goes up to him, “you have a wonderful power of making people forget who you are. I did not know it till to-day. I have just heard the story of Ebba Dohna’s death, and that it was the discovery that she loved one who was unworthy which killed her. Your poem has made me understand that you are that man. I cannot understand how any one with your antecedents can show himself in the presence of an honorable woman. I cannot understand it, Herr Berling. Do I speak plainly enough?” “You do, Countess. I will only say one word in my defence. I was convinced, I thought the whole time that you knew everything about me. I have never tried to hide anything; but it is not so pleasant to cry out one’s life’s bitterest sorrow on the highways.” He goes. And in the same instant Countess Dohna sets her little foot on the bunch of blue stars. “You have now done what I wished,” says Anna Stjärnhök sternly to the countess; “but it is also the end of our friendship. You need not think that I can forgive your having been cruel to him. You have turned him away, scorned, and wounded him, and I—I will follow him into captivity; to the scaffold if need be. I will watch over him, protect him. You have done what I wished, but I shall never forgive you.” “But, Anna, Anna!” “Because I told you all that do you think that I did it with a glad spirit? Have I not sat here and bit by bit torn my heart out of my breast?”