before. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of
her. "In your case, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

"I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who
didn't come back?"

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back.
Not after I stopped writing to you, at least. That was all
over, long before I married Olaf."

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you
could do to me was to marry Olaf?"

Clara laughed. "No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf."

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know,
Clara Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut
away some day, and I've been thinking you might as well cut away
with me."

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as
you think. I won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I
feel like it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can.
They've never got the best of me yet, and one can live, so long as
one isn't beaten. If I go back to father, it's all up with Olaf in
politics. He knows that, and he never goes much beyond
sulking. I've as much wit as the Ericsons. I'll never leave them
unless I can show them a thing or two."