She did not know what she was saying, for it was despair that was talking in her heart, despair that said it didn’t matter if she fell ill and died like her mother in mid-winter and glaciers over the heath, and oh, I wish to God they had never revived me never to live a happy moment and it’s my fault my foster-mother died, because I didn’t love her enough, but my poor little brother Helgi, he was so fond of her that he thought of her night and day, and I heard him say on the paving that he was dead, and it should have been I that was lost in the dark and died in the snow on the heath, oh I am sure it must be so good to be dead, because if you leave me, Father, there will be no one to help me—and thus she continued for a while, nestling up to him as she wept, her head shaking on his chest in despair.