matis, my love, sweet and beautiful
as its blossoms, dear as its growth about the windows of a home--and
deep, endlessly deep, as life itself."

"But that is just what you are doing, Olof--for all you say is like
a poem and a song," answered the girl. "Sing for me again--and let me
just sit here at your feet and listen."

"Ah, if only you could sit there always, as now. Clematis--how strange
that I should meet you--when I never thought to meet with any flower
again--saw only the yellow faded leaves of autumn everywhere around."

"Autumn ... faded leaves...." The girl looked at him, timidly
questioning. "Olof, don't be angry with me. But.... Have you loved
others before? They say so many things about you."

The young man was silent a moment.

"Ay, there are many things to say, perhaps," he murmured sadly.
"But you, Clematis--could you care for me; could you not love me
altogether, if you knew I had loved another before?"

"No, no--'twas not meant so," said the girl hastily, touching his knee
with a slight caress. "I was not thinking of myself...."

"But of...?"

They looked at each other in silence.

"Yes--I know what you mean. I can read it in your eyes." He laid one
hand tenderly on the girl's head.

"Life is so strange. And human beings strangest of all. I have
loved--but now I feel as one that had only dreamed strange fancies."

"But have you loved them really--in earnest? I mean, did you give them
all you had to give--and can anyone give that more than once in life?"
The girl spoke softly, but with such deep feeling that the young man
found no words to answer, and sat silently staring before him.

"Who can tell," he said, after a while. "I thought I had given all I
had long since, and had all that could ever be given me. I felt myself
poor as the poorest beggar. Then you came, unlike all the others, a
wealth of hidden treasure in yourself--none had ever given me what you
gave. And now--I feel myself rich, young and unspoiled, as if I were
crossing the threshold of life for the first time."

"Rich--ay, you are rich--as a prince. And I am your poorest little
slave, sitting at your feet. But how can anyone ever be so rich--how
can it be? I can never understand."

"Do you know what I think? I think that human beings are endlessly
rich and deep, like Nature itself, that is always young, and only
changes from one season to another. All that has happened to me before
seems now only the rising of sap in spr