"Yes; but what then?" at last asked Ingeborg, with a soft smile
and not withdrawing the hand that Bagger had seized. "The proper
meaning of what you have told me is that your troth is plighted to
another, unknown lady."

"No: that isn't the proper meaning--"

"But yet it is a fact. At the moment when you stand at the altar
with one, another can step forward and claim you."

"Oh, that kind of a claim! A piece of paper without signature,
sent away in the air! In law it has no validity at all, and
morally it has no power, when I love another as I love you,
Ingeborg!"

"That I am not sure of. It appears to me there is something
painful in not being faithful to one's youth and its promises, and
in the consciousness of having deceived another."

"You say this so earnestly, Ingeborg, that you make me desperate.
I confess that there is something ... something I would wish
otherwise ... but for Heaven's sake, make it not so earnest!"

As Ingeborg knew so well about it, she could not regard the matter
as earnestly as her words denoted; but for another reason she had
suddenly conceived or felt an earnestness. It would not do to have
a husband with so much fancy as Bagger, always having something
unknown, fairy-like, lying out upon the horizon, holding claim
upon him from his youth; and on the other hand it was against her