beautiful. I don’t believe that my husband ever said such a thing. I don’t think, in fact, that he ever even called me pretty. I was not thinking at the time that any of these attentions were in any way dangerous.
“I have made some konfektkake,” I said, wishing to change the subject. “Can I give you a piece?”
“What is the konfektkake?” he asked.
“It’s a Norwegian sweet,” I said. “I think you will like it.”
I put before our boarder a plate of chocolate cake. Louis damped his pipe and laid it on the table. After he had taken his first bite of cake, I could see immediately that he had a great liking for it, and he ate steadily until nearly all of it was gone. I was thinking that I had ought to eat the remaining two pieces, as I would not be able to explain to my husband that evening what had happened to the rest, and so I did. Louis wiped the icing from his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
“I think that you are seducing me with all this smoke and konfektkake,” he said, grinning and pronouncing the Norwegian badly.
I was shocked by his words. I stood up. “You must go now,” I said quickly.
“Oh, but Mrs. Hontvedt, do not send me away. We are having such a nice time. And I am only teasing you. I can see you have not been teased much lately. Am I correct?”
“Please go now,” I repeated.
He got up slowly from his chair, but in doing so, arranged himself so that he was standing even closer to me than he had been before. I did not like actually to back away from him, and besides, I would have had to press against the stove, which I could not do for fear of burning myself, and so it was that he reached out and put his fingers to my cheek, very gently, and to my everlasting shame, unbidden tears sprang quite suddenly to my eyes, tears so numerous that I was unable to hide them.
“Mrs. Hontvedt,” he said in an astonished voice.
I reached up and tore his hand away from my cheek. There was no reply I could have made to him that even I myself could have understood, and as I did not think that he would leave the room, I grabbed my cloak from the hook and ran from the cottage altogether.
Once begun, the tears would not stop, and so I walked nearly blindly to the end of the island and put my hands into fists and shook them angrily at the sea.
I did not tell my husband of Louis Wagner’s visit to me, as, in truth, there was not much to tell, but John shortly could see for himself that his boarder was improving in strength. I never did, after that first morning, invite Wagner into my apartment when I was alone, but I saw him often enough, as I continued to nurse him, and then later, morning and evening, when he took his meals with us. Indeed, after he was fully recovered, Wagner took to sitting by the stove in the evenings, so that there would be Wagner and myself and John and Matthew, and sometimes the men would talk, but most often, they would smoke in silence. I am happy to report that I never again lost my composure with Louis Wagner, although I must say he continued to place me under his scrutiny, and if he no longer dared to tease me with words, I did think, from time to time, that he mocked me with his eyes.
There was only one other occasion when I was seriously to wonder at Louis Wagner’s intentions and, indeed, his sanity. On a late summer afternoon, while Louis was still recuperating, I heard through the wall that separated our apartment from his room the most dreadful banging about and muttering, and I suddenly became extremely frightened.
“Louis?” I called, and then again, “Louis?”
But I had no reply, and still the commotion in the next room continued. Quite concerned, I ran outside the house and looked in at the window of our boarder’s room, which, I am sorry to say, I had not yet adorned with curtains. There I saw a most astounding sight. Louis Wagner, in a fit of uncommon distress, was thrashing and flailing about, upturning objects on the shelf, creating a chaos with the bedclothes, and all the time expressing a terrible rage on his face and in