Levy was no longer a harmless, gently stimulating, caressing shadow. He stood there by the side of her bed terribly alive and with pale face and harsh, passionate voice, hotly demanding his rights. And behind him roared the whole traffic of the vast opening world. She had to answer yes or no. She knew she could not escape that moment. Yes or no. Torn between jubilation and agony she writhed in the darkness. She could not quite set aside her passion. Her egoism trembled to the very roots. She dreamt frightened dreams of being permitted at last to bare herself, give herself up, be freed from herself, to fling all her misery into the flames of love.
But in the midst of her excitement she suddenly became cold as ice. Horribly clear a voice sounded inside her: “Supposing he only wants your money!”
Then suspicion, and anxious greed rushed over her with a thousand reasons. She tormented herself systematically with her sister’s and brothers’ shrugs of shoulders, sarcasms and covert warnings. Levy’s sharpness, his genius for business, his legal acumen, all that she had profited by in him seemed now to bear witness against him. “Yes, it is my money he wants,” she mumbled, “of course it is my money.” And now she forgot his looks, his accents and the unsteadiness of his voice. And the memory of her own white body in the mirror could no longer warm her with a single spark of self-confidence. No, it is my money he wants. And perhaps he does not even mean to marry me to get it. Perhaps he will simply use his position to cheat me, trick me, and rob me. He must have seen that I don’t understand business. Perhaps he is just now planning how he can take all I have from me, and ruin me.
So Hedvig passed hours of grinding agony, till, calmed by the morning light, she fell into a short sleep.
A few days later she stood again at the telephone, ringing up Levy. Now it was a question of some timber shares that she had bought on his advice and that had gone down a few crowns.
On the fifteenth of June Selambs Ltd. had its annual meeting. That was the last permitted day according to the articles of association. Peter could never make himself pay any dividend a single day before he must.
The meeting was, as usual, held in the office at Selambshof. Hedvig came early so that the others should not be able to meet and talk about her. For weeks she had worried over this meeting, at which Levy would again meet her sister and brothers. A few years ago—on Laura’s and Stellan’s recommendation—he had been allowed to buy a few shares, and had been elected to the board, chiefly in order to keep an eye on the managing director.
Peter was extremely obliging. He stalked about arranging shares and distributing writing blocks and pencils. He always looked frightened nowadays at these meetings, and today more so than usual.
Levy came late, in a hurry, with his coat buttoned, as impersonal as a chapter of a law book. He bowed stiffly and sat down at once in his usual place; the chairman’s place at the writing desk.
“Well,” said Peter, “shall we elect a chairman for the annual meeting. Is anybody proposed?”
Laura played with the chain of her little gilt handbag. She was dressed in black and white stripes and had a very tight skirt. It was in that year that skirts began to be worn tight. She still had her golden hair and her smooth skin. And all the same you could clearly see that she had aged. Her voice sounded cold, the playful purring had gone.
“I beg to propose Stellan,” she said.
Hedvig was huddled up in her corner, staring at Levy. “Now he will look at me, now he thinks I shall say something,” she thought and grew cold all over her body. But Levy did not. Perhaps he grew a shade paler, but he looked at Laura with an amused little smile. Then he calmly put away his papers.
“I beg to second the last honourable speaker,” he said. “The more so as I have things to say which do not come well from the Chair.”
Peter’s voice sounded like that of a ventriloquist:
“Is the meeting agreed on this?”
“Yes,” said Levy in a loud voice. Then he left his place and demonstratively went and sat down beside Laura on the sofa, where he took up a foreign newspaper and began to study the quotations.
So Stellan was chairman. He seemed to take up the hammer without any enthusiasm and now and then cast embarrassed side-glances at his predecessor. They then proceeded to the adjustment of votes. When they came to Tord Selamb, one hundred shares, absent, Levy pricked up his ears:
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, in an indifferent tone, “this is now the third year that Mr. Tord Selamb neither appears in person nor sends a proxy. Is that not strange?”
Stellan looked inquiringly at Peter:
“I suppose the meeting has been properly convened? He has been called?”
Peter searched his papers:
“Tord does not care a damn for old Selambshof,” he muttered in a reproachful tone. “He does not care a damn for anything. …”
“Supposing the reason is that he has sold his shares,” said Levy without looking up from his paper.
Now it was Stellan’s and Laura’s turn to prick up their ears:
“Sold? To whom should he
