ter the meeting had not been so imprudent as to
propose my health! Then he let himself go! There was the theme of
themes, and he had never unbosomed himself about it to any one! The
toast applied the match to his inward fire; his exultant joy blazed up.
He made a speech in praise of at least twenty of my characteristics, of
marriage, of fatherhood. He----"

She could not go on. She sat down, her daughter by her; they were both
in tears. The roar of the river swept pitilessly past them, and yet it
seemed to bring them a kind of comfort. All the tears we may shed avail
nothing. It goes on its way, and nothing arrests its determined course
to the sea.

Through the voice of nature the whispers of memory brought back his
tragic end. It came over them both again how, after the banquet, he
wanted to refresh himself with a bath. How every one tried to dissuade
him, but it was no use. How he sprang in from a great height, took
longer and longer strokes out, as though each one of them were taking
him home, was seized by cramp and sank.

"Mother, there is so much I still want to hear about your life
together." Then, after a moment: "Mother, you must give me that too!
Yes, you have told me so much, so very much about it. But not just the
thing I want to know now! The love, mother, the devotion between you
both! Mother, that must have been something too wonderful to realise."

"Beyond all comprehension, my child! Beyond all understanding! And, do
you know, the calumnies that were spread about us, especially the
miserable anonymous letters, all kinds of meanness, it all helped. For
each time we found in each other a perfect refuge. He was not so
thin-skinned in such matters as I. It was through me that he first came
to understand them--how to manage the petty incidents of social life.
The leaders of society in this little country are not of pure Norwegian
race, but of foreign descent. A man like him could never learn to keep
pace with them. But I was one of them, and, through the effect on me,
he understood! When he once was started on a line of thought you can't
imagine how fast he went. He was a discoverer, an investigator by
nature. But when he first rightly found out what I had exposed myself
to by choosing him, ah! how the thought of it spurred him on! If ever
any one has been rewarded here on the earth, he rewarded me. Night and
day, the whole summer, the whole autumn, the whole winter, the whole
spring, we were never apart