dismayed. They were more than disappointed--the word is too weak;
to many of them it seemed simply deplorable. How on earth could it
have happened? Every one, herself excepted, knew that it would
ruin her life.

On Kristen Ravn's independent position, her strong character, her
rare courage, on her knowledge, gifts, and energy, many,
especially women, had built up a future for the cause of Woman.
Had she not already written fearlessly for it? Her tendency
towards eccentricity and paradox would soon have worn off, they
thought, as the struggle carried her forward, and at last she
might have become one of the first champions of the cause. All
that was noblest and best in Kristen must predominate in the end.

And now the few who seek to explain life's perplexities rather
than to condemn them discovered--Some of them, that the defiant
tone of her writings and her love of opposition bespoke a degree
of vanity sufficient to have led her into fallacy. Others
maintained that hers was essentially a romantic nature which might
cause her to form a false estimate both of her own powers and of
the circumstances of life. Others, again, had heard something of
how this husband and wife lived, one in each wing of the house,
with different staffs of servants, and with separate incomes; that
she had furnished her side in her own way, at her own expense, and
had apparently conceived the idea of a new kind of married life.
Some people declared that the great lime-trees near the mansion at
Hellebergene were alone responsible for the marriage. They soughed
so wondrously in the summer evenings, and the sea beneath their
branches told such enthralling stories. Those grand old woods, the
like of which were hardly to be found in impoverished Norway, were