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It had been a bad day—one of those days when she did not
feel sober. However, she felt better now.
Scarcely was she out in the street before the same stupid,
desperate fright came over her again, and, without realizing it,
she rushed on as if lashed by it, with clenched hands and
muttering to herself.
Once she pulled off her gloves, because she was burning hot,
and she recollected suddenly having noticed a wet spot on one
of them after she had caressed the child. She flung them away
in disgust.
When she reached home she stood a moment hesitating in
the passage, then knocked at Gunnar’s door, but he was not
in. She went to look on the roof; there was no one there.
She entered her room, lit the lamp, and sat staring at the
flame, her arms folded. After a while she rose and began
walking restlessly up and down the floor—only to sit down again
as before. She listened breathlessly to every sound on the
stairs. Oh, if only Gunnar would come! And not the other
one. But how could he? He did not know where she lived—he
might have met somebody who knew and asked. Oh,
Gunnar, Gunnar, come!
She would go straight to him, throw herself in his arms.
The moment she had seen Helge Gram’s light brown eyes
again, her whole past, that had begun under their glance,
confronted her. It all came back—the disgust, the doubt of her
own ability to feel, to will and to choose, and the suspicion that
in reality she wanted what she said she did not. While she was
pretending to herself that she wanted to be strong, pure, and
whole in her feelings, and while she said she wanted to be
honest, courageous, disciplined—to work and to sacrifice
herself for others—she allowed herself to be tossed between moods
and desires she did not care to fight, although she knew she
should have done so. She had pretended to love so as to sneak
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