If any one spoke of him to her, she changed the subject. By
the time that the boy was a year old, it had become evident that
she contemplated leaving Hellebergene entirely. She had been in
Christiania for some time and had gone home to make arrangements,
saying that she should come back in a few days.
But she never did so.
The day after her return home, while the numerous servants at
Hellebergene, as well as the labourers with their wives and
children, were all assembled at the potato digging, Harald Kaas
appeared, carrying his wife under his left arm like a sack. He
held her round the waist, feet first, her face downwards and
hidden by her hair, her hands convulsively clutching his left
thigh, her legs sometimes hanging down, sometimes straight out. He
walked composedly out with her, holding in his right hand a bunch
of long fresh birch twigs. A little way from the gallery he
paused, and laying her across his left knee, he tore off some of
her clothes, and beat her until the blood flowed. She never
uttered a sound. When he put her from him, she tremblingly
rearranged--first her hair, thus displaying her face just as the
blood flowed back from it, leaving it deadly white.
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