surround me. Not as though he thundered or
commanded. No, it was his personality, and something in the voice
itself. It was deep and restrained, as though from a cavern; it came
fitfully, but without cessation. I believe he spoke for over two hours.
Whomever he happened to look at looked at him, and if he looked away
the other continued to gaze--he couldn't help it, you understand. His
eyes blazed with inward fire, he stood bending forward like a tree on a
hillside. The image of the forest rose in my mind. Later, when I was
nearer to him, the breath of the forest seemed to hang round him. And
his skin was so clear! For instance, that part of his throat which was
not sunburnt, because he stooped. When he lifted his head, you can't
imagine how pure and fair it was.

"Ah, how have I drifted into this train of thought? But never mind, I
have drifted into it--and I will follow it out--it takes me to your
father's side again! O Magne, how I loved him! how I shall always love
him!" She burst into tears--the girl's heart beat against hers. The
softened colours of wood and plain in the uncertain light, the
strenuous roar of the river seemed to sunder them from each other; the
surroundings were at war with their mood; but the more closely did they
cling together, each supporting the other.

"Magne, you mustn't ask me to put what I have to say to you in any sort
of order. I only know the point I am aiming at.

"Yes, he was like the nature that surrounded him, fashioned on a
generous scale and rich with hidden treasures: so much I dimly grasped.
Everything I saw was new to me, the face of nature as well as the rest.
I had travelled, but not in Norway.

"It is said of us women that we are not able to analyse those whom we
love, but only worship them in the abstract. But he had a friend, his
best friend; he could analyse him; the poet. He was present at Karl
Mander's last meeting, and he came to me from it when your father was
dead. We talked together of everything as much as I then could. He
wrote about him the most beautiful things that have ever been written.
I know them by heart; I know everything by heart that has been worthily
written about your father."

"Do you know what it was he wrote?"

"'If the landscape I see around me could speak like a human being; if
the dark lofty ridge could find speech to answer the river, and those
two began to talk across the underwood, then you would know the
impression made when Karl Ma