like tramps. Wonder what father would say to that?"

"You may laugh, Ingmar, but this can't be; it can't be."

"I think it can, for now I don't care a damn about anything or
anybody but you!"

Brita was ready to cry, but he just made her tell him again and
again how often she had thought of him, and how much she had longed
for him. Little by little he became as quiet as a child listening
to a lullaby. It was all so different from what Brita had expected.
She had thought of talking to him about her crime, if he came for
her, and the weight of it. She would have liked to tell either him
or her mother, or whoever had come for her, how unworthy she was
of them. But not a word of this had she been allowed to speak.

Presently he said very gently:

"There is something you want to tell me?"

"Yes."

"And you are thinking about it all the time?"

"Day and night!"

"And it gets sort of mixed in with everything?"

"That's true."