She passed no berries through her fingers to check the number of prayers said, for she found herself unable to say any prayer at all.

If he would come back to her, and ask her pardon-- ask it in truth at her feet--she would still forgive him, regardless of the Virgin and the saints.

And if he did not come back, what was the fate that Lotta Luxa had predicted for her, and to which she had acknowledged to herself that she would be driven to submit?
In either case how could she again come to terms with St John and St Nicholas?
And how was she to live?
Should she lose her lover, as she now told herself would certainly be her fate, what possibility of life was left to her?
From day to day and from week to week she had put off to a future hour any definite consideration of what she and her father should do in their poverty, believing that it might be postponed till her marriage would make all things easy.

Her future mode of living had often been discussed between her and her lover, and she had been candid enough in explaining to him that she could not leave her father desolate.

He had always replied that his wife's father should want for nothing, and she had been delighted to think that she could with joy accept that from her husband which nothing would induce her to accept from her lover.