red his saying it, she remembered his sadness as he did so. Had
he really thought of himself and her, or of the children and her? Had
he compared his own weakness with their health, with their future? Her
thoughts wandered far away from the boys, and she was once more
immersed in all his words and looks, trying by them to solve this
enigma. But these, with the yearning and pain, came back as they had
never done before. Her whole life was over; her dream was of too long
standing, too strong, too clear, the roots could not be pulled up; it
was impossible. Were they not round everything which, next day, she
should see, or touch, or use? As a last stroke she remembered that
the boys were not at home; she would come to an empty house.

But she resisted still; for when she got home and had bathed and gone
to bed, and again the moonlight shone in on her and reminded her of
her thoughts the night before, she turned away and cried aloud like a
child. None could enter, none could hear her; her heart was young, as
though she were but seventeen; it could not, it would not give up!

What was it, in fact, that she had wished for to-day? She did not
know--no, she did not! She only knew that her happiness was
_there_--and so she had let it remain. Now she was disappointed and
deluded in a way that certainly few had been.

She could not bear to desecrate him further. Then the winter song
swept past in his voice, sweet, full, sorrowful, as if it wished to
make all clear to her; and, tractable as a child, she composed herself
and listened. What did it say? That her dreams united two summers,
the one which had been and the one which was slowly struggling up
anew. Thanks be to the dreams which had awakened it. It said, too,
that the dreams were something in themselves often of greater truth
than reality itself. She had felt this when she was tending her
flowers.

In her uneasy tossing in her bed, her plait had come close to her
hand. Sadly she drew it forward; he had kissed it again to-day. And so
she lay on her side, and took it between her hands, and cried.

"Mamma, mamma!" she heard whispered, and thus she slept.

_THE NOVELS OF BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON_

_Edited by EDMUND GOSSE_

_Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 3s. net_

_Synnoeve Solbakken_
_Arne_
_A Happy Boy_
_The Fisher Lass_
_The Bridal March, & One Day_
_Magnhild, & Dust_
_Captain Mansana, & Mother's Hands_
_Absalom's Hair, & A Painful Memory_

_LO