"What else should I call it? Why didn't you bring me this money at once?"
"I wanted to wait until the day of your wedding."
"If you had only come before, I'm sure I could have bought back the farm from Berger Sven Persson, and then I would have married you."
"Yes, I knew that."
"And yet you come on my wedding day, when it's too late!"
"It would have been too late in any case, Ingmar. It was too late a week ago, it is too late now, and it will be too late forever."
Ingmar had again sunk down on the stone. He covered his face with his hands and wailed:
"And I thought there was no help for it! I believed that no power on earth could have altered this; but now I find that there was a way out, that we might all have been happy."
"Understand one thing, Ingmar: when I found the money, I knew at once that it would be the kind of help to us that you say. But it was no temptation to me—no, not for a second; for I belong to another."
"You should have kept it yourself!" cried Ingmar. "I feel as if a wolf were gnawing at my heart. So long as I believed there was no other course open to me, it wasn't so bad; but now that I know you could have been mine, I can't—"