Wherever I looked there appeared to my horror a dark blot, and, full of anxiety, I thought that perhaps this was already the beginning of the curse.

I dared not look at Susanna any more for fear of throwing the black spot on her, and at last I could not forbear looking at the floor where I stood to see if there were possibly burnt marks under my feet.

I thought of the sea-sprite, who in Vaagen's church had enticed the minister's daughter to go with him, and whose instinct had driven him out of church during the blessing, whereas I was condemned to stand.
After the promise was given, I remember only dimly that another discourse was pronounced and more hymns were sung.
When I once more found myself upon the way home with my father, who with an anxious look supported me, my last recollection of the whole thing was that Susanna, who I suppose discovered that I was ill, had towards the end of the service looked at me with just the same expression as the lady with the rose had done that very morning--quiet, pale, sorrowful, like one who would be glad to help, but could not.
I think that what my father had said to me about not disgracing him before the minister contributed not a little to the fact that I kept up to the last; for I fainted as soon as we got home and was put to bed, while my father, who had now become seriously alarmed, immediately sent an express messenger for the doctor.
When he came the next day, he found me in wild delirium.

My fancy overflowed, like a river from which all dams are removed, with a stream of the wildest conceptions.

It seemed to me that dreadful forms danced and nodded round the bed, and among them one with a long letter of condemnation, with a seal under it, and that Anne Kvaen was there, rolling glittering eyes, while now and again Susanna looked at me with a glance full of pain, as if it were not in her power to hinder my perdition.
From what I learned afterwards, the doctor at first thought it was a nervous fever, but from certain symptoms and the nature of my ravings, concerning which Anne Kvaen, who probably had her own thoughts on the subject, thought it necessary to inform him, he quite changed his opinion.