loving
touches in my room--at my desk--

Laura (ashamed). Oh, it isn't true!

Axel. Don't believe her! Laura is so kind-hearted--her fear of me made
her shy, but she could not withstand her own kind impulses and my humble
faithfulness. When I was sitting late in my room, working for her,
she was sitting up in hers--at any rate I often thought I heard her
footstep; and when I came home late after a wearisome journey, if she
did not run to welcome me, it was not because she was wanting in wifely
gratitude--Laura has no lack of that--but because she did not wish to
betray her happiness till the great day of our reconciliation should
come. (LAURA gets up.)

Father. Then you were not reconciled immediately?

Axel. Not immediately.

Mother (anxiously, in a subdued voice). My goodness, Laura did not say a
word about that!

Axel. Because she loved you, and did not want to distress you
unnecessarily. But does not her very silence about it show that she was
waiting for me? That was her love's first gift to me. (LAURA sits down
again.) After a while she gave me others. She saw that I was not angry;
on the contrary, she saw that where I had erred, I had erred through my
love for her; and she is so loving herself, that little by little she
schooled herself to meet me in gentle silence--she longed to be a good
wife. And then, one lovely morning--just like to-day--we both had
been reading a book which was like a voice from afar, threatening our
happiness, and we were driven together by fear. Then, all at once,
all the doors and windows flew wide open! It was your letter! The room
seemed to glow with warmth--just as it does now with you sitting there;
summer went singing through the house--and then I saw in her eyes that
all the blossoms were going to unfold their petals! Then I knelt down
before her, as I do now, and said: For your parents' sake, that they
may be happy about us--for my sake, that I may not be punished any
longer--for your own sake, that you may be able again to live as the
fulness of your kind heart prompts--let us find one another now! And
then Laura answered--(LAURA throws herself into his arms, in a burst of
tears. All get up.)

Mother. That was beautiful, children!

Father. As beautiful as if we were young again ourselves, and had found
one another!--How well he told it, too!

Mother. Yes, it was just as if it was all happening before our eyes!

Father. Wasn't it?--He's a very gifted man.

Mother (i