He sat thinking for a good while, and then he sang her the song that he had made for their own wedding to the tune of her race’s Bridal March.  Quite softly he sang it, but with such exultation as she had never heard in any voice before.  She looked down on her home, the house she was to drive away from on that day; followed the road with her eyes down to the bridge across the river, and along on the other side right up to the church, which lay on a height, among birch-trees, with a group of houses near it.  It was not a very clear day, but the subdued light over the landscape was in sympathy with the subdued picture in her mind.  How many hundred times had she not driven that road in fancy, only she never knew with whom!  The words and the tune entranced her; the peculiar warm, soft voice seemed to touch the very depths of her being; her eyes were full, but she was not crying; nor was she laughing.  She was sitting with her hand on his, now looking at him, now over the valley, when she saw smoke beginning to rise from the chimney of her home; the fire was being lit for making the dinner.  This was an omen; she turned to Hans and pointed.  He had finished his song now, and they sat still and looked.

Very soon they were on their way down through the birch wood, and Hans was having trouble with the dog, to make him keep quiet.  Mildrid’s heart began to throb.  Hans arranged with her that he would stay behind, but near the house; it was better that she should go in first alone.  He carried her over one or two marshy places, and he felt that her hands were cold.  “Don’t think of what you’re to say,” he whispered; “just wait and see how things come.”  She gave no sound in answer, nor did she look at him.

They came out of the wood—­the last part had been big dark fir-trees, among which they had walked slowly, he quietly telling her about her great-grandfather’s wooing of his father’s sister, Aslaug; an old, strange story, which she only half heard, but which all the same helped her—­came out of the wood into the open fields and meadows; and he became quiet too.  Now she turned to him, and her look expressed such a great dread of what was before her that it made him feel wretched.  He found no words of encouragement; the matter concerned him too nearly.  They walked on a little farther, side by side, some bushes between them and the house concealing them from its inhabitants.  When they got so near that he thought she must now go on alone, he whistled softly to the dog, and she took this as the sign that they must part.  She stopped and looked utterly unhappy and forlorn; he whispered to her:  “I’ll be praying for you here, Mildrid—­and I’ll come when you need me.”  She gave him a kind of distracted look of thanks; she was really unable either to think or to see clearly.  Then she walked on.

As soon as she came out from the bushes she saw right into the big room of the main building—­right through it—­for it had windows at both ends, one looking up towards the wood and one down the valley.  Hans had seated himself behind the nearest bush, with the dog at his side, and he too could see everything in the room; at this moment there was no one in it.  Mildrid looked back once when she came to the barn, and he nodded to her.  Then she went round the end of the barn, into the yard.