After this Krista began to implore forgiveness, for she felt that perhaps she had been hasty. But the peasant woman would not hear a word. “Dont let me see you in the house a moment longer,” she roared, and Krista did not venture to address her again.
She collected her clothes, tied them in a bundle, and with the bundle tramped off to Venik on the hillside.
“Now I am going, now it is all over,” she said when she came there. “Now I dare not venture into the cottage.” She said it with a smile, for her grief assumed the guise of smiles, which were indeed a kind of determination. And then she said what had happened.
“Where shall you go?” said Venik, as if beside himself: for indeed he had never before had to face so horrible a calamity.
“I know not,” said Krista, “I only know that I must say good bye to you in earnest. And again she laughed a short constrained laugh, so that Venik began to be embarrassed to know whether it was all jest or earnest.
But it was all so perfectly true, that Venik for a long time lost the power of speech. When he found words to speak the first he uttered were “you shall not go alone; I will go with you.”
“Where would you go,” said Krista with surprise and terror.
