Kristin Lavransdatter

by Sigrid Undset

He had been a good husband to her; he believed that himself. He had shown her all the respect he could, given her full authority, asked her advice about everything, been faithful to her; and they had had six children. He had simply wanted to live with her without her always trying to seize what was in his heart—and what he refused to reveal. He had never loved anyone. What about Ingunn, Karl’s wife at Bru? Lavrans blushed in the darkness. He had always visited them when he traveled through the valley. He had probably never spoken to the woman alone even once. But whenever he saw her—if he merely thought of her—he felt something like that first smell of the earth in the spring, right after the snow had gone. Now he realized: it could have happened to him too . . . he could have loved someone too. But he had been married so young, and he had grown wary. Then he found that he thrived best out in the wilderness—up on the mountain plateaus, where every living creature demands wide-open space, with room enough to flee. Wary, they watch every stranger that tries to sneak up on them.