t burn you the deeper. You will struggle through on your own path;
but happiness does not lie at the end of that path for you. You will
succeed, yes--you could not fail; but always the load on your
shoulders will grow heavier and heavier. You will carry it alone,
until at last it will be too much for you. Your strong heart will
break. You will lie down and die. Such a fate for you, Merne, my
boy--such a man as you will be!"

She sighed, shivered, and looked about her, startled, as if she had
spoken aloud in some dream.

"Well, then, go on!" she said, and withdrew her hands from his
shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the
gold-flecked slope before them. "Go on, you are a man. I know you will
not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will
not turn--because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to
find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die."

"You give me no long shrift, mother?" said the youth, with a twinkle
in his eye.

"How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not
know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to
face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son's
future--if she dares to read it. She knows--she knows!"

There was a long silence; then the widow continued.

"Listen, Merne," she said. "You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not
that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is
something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now
I could not fail to know. I tell you that your great desire, the great
wish of your life, shall be yours! You never will relinquish it, you
always will possess it, and at last it will be yours."

Again silence fell between them before she went on, her hand again
resting on her son's dark hair.

"Your great desire will cost me my son. Be it so! We breed men for the
world, we women, and we give them up. Out of the agony of our hearts,
we do and must always give them up. That is the price I must pay. But
I give you up to the great hope, the great thing of your life. Should
I complain? Am I not your mother, and therefore a woman? And should a
woman complain? But, Oh, Merne, Merne, my son, my boy!"

She drew his head back, so that she could see deep into his eyes. Her
dark brows half frowning, she gazed down upon him, not so much in
tenderness as in intentness. For the first time in many months--for
the las