there was the brightness and warmth of certainty in our hearts.

Harald. Yes, our love is the one certainty for me! Fog may obscure the
goal I aim at, the road I have to I read, the very ground I stand on;
doubts may even for a while attack my faith; but my love for you shines
clear through it all!

Gertrud. Thank you, my darling! If that is so, there is nothing that we
cannot overcome!

Harald. Of course, you know what took place to-day?

Gertrud. I can guess.

Harald. Is it true that you are ill? Why did you never tell me?

Gertrud. No, the doctor is not telling the truth; I am not ill! Even
if I were, what matter? I should go on living as long as I could--and
should have done my duty before I gave in!

Harald. That is the way to look at it!

Gertrud. But I am not ill! I suffer, it is true--and am likely to--every
time you are persecuted, or my parents on my account. Because _I_ have
drawn them into all this that, they are so unfitted for, and that is why
it pains me so to see how unprepared it finds them--most of all when,
out of tenderness for me, they try to conceal it. But I can't alter
things. We are fighting for a cause that you believe to be right, and
so do I; surely that is better than never to suffer at all in any good
cause. Try me! Let me share the fight with you! I am not weak; it is
only that my heart is sore for those I love.

Harald. You splendid, loyal creature!--and you are mine! (Embraces her.)

Gertrud. You should hear what grandfather says!

Harald. Yes, how is the dear old gentleman?

Gertrud. Pretty well, thanks, though he never gets out now. But he is
following your work, and he says that what you are aiming at is right,
if you ask for God's guidance on your way. Harald--you will always be
the same as you are now--good and genuine--won't you, dear? Not like
the rest of them--nothing but bitterness and malice, always talking of
principles and consequences and all the rest of it, and always attacking
others? If one were obliged to be like that, it would be a curse to be a
politician.

Harald. I will be what you make me! I think that behind every man's
public life you can see his private life--whether he has a real home,
and what it is like, or whether he only has a place he lives in--that is
to say, no real home.

Gertrud. With God's help I shall try to make a bright, snug and cosy
home for you! And this fog is delightful, because it only makes the
thought of such a home all the