th her own face,
stared at her from the walls.

She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after
that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid
tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her
face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder,
but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung
in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As
she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the
threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at
the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his
eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely
with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and
ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the
thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to
give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs
will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven
away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks,
she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the
threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.

"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it,
"if I--if--I gave--up," and then the words died, strangled in his
throat. Katrine held up her hand.

"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing
him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm again. Where
have you been freezing yourself like this?"

She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened
coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by
the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee
and poured him out a cup.

"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling
mixture, from which the steam came furiously.

"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup.
With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to
come back to his face.

Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of
the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through
the roof.

"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was
selfish of me to ask you to leav