She noticed that he said nothing about wanting her to come, but
maybe it was because he did not wish to force himself upon her a
second time. She grew very reluctant. It couldn't be an enviable
task to take one of her kind to the Ingmar Farm. Then something
seemed to say:

"Tell him that you will go to America; it is the only service you
can render him. Tell him that, tell him that!" urged something
within her. And while this thought was still in her mind she heard
some one say: "I'm afraid that I am not strong enough to go to
America. They tell me that you have to work very hard over there."
It was as if another had spoken, and not she herself.

"So they say," Ingmar said indifferently.

She was ashamed of her weakness and thought of how only that
morning she had told the prison chaplain that she was going out
into the world a new and a better woman. Thoroughly displeased with
herself, she walked silently for some time, wondering how she
should take back her words. But as soon as she tried to speak, she
was held back by the thought that if he still cared for her it
would be the basest kind of ingratitude to repulse him again. "If I
could only read his thoughts!" she said herself.

Presently she stopped and leaned against a wall. "All this noise
and the sight of so many people makes my bead go round," she said.
He put out his hand, which she took; then they went along, hand in
hand. Ingmar was thinking, "Now we look like sweethearts." All the
same he wondered how it would be when he got home, how his mother