you,
But long I only saw a daughter in you;--
Now I ask of you--will you be my wife?
[SVANHILD draws back in embarrassment.

FALK [seizing his arm].
Hold!

GULDSTAD.
Patience; she must answer. Put your own
Question;--then her decision will be free.

FALK.
I--do you say?

GULDSTAD [looking steadily at him].
The happiness of three
Lives is at stake to-day,--not mine alone.
Don't fancy it concerns you less than me;
For tho' base matter is my chosen sphere,
Yet nature made me something of a seer.
Yes, Falk, you love her. Gladly, I confess,
I saw your young love bursting into flower.
But this young passion, with its lawless power,
May be the ruin of her happiness.

FALK [firing up].
You have the face to say so?

GULDSTAD [quietly].
Years give right.
Say now you won her--

FALK [defiantly].
And what then?

GULDSTAD [slowly and emphatically].
Yes, say
She ventured in one bottom to embark
Her all, her all upon one card to play,--
And then life's tempest swept the ship away,
And the flower faded as the day grew dark?

FALK [involuntarily].
She must not!

GULDSTAD [looking at him with meaning].
Hm. So I myself decided
When I was young, like you. In days of old
I was afire for one. Our paths divided.
Last night we met again;--the fire was cold.

FALK.
Last night?

GULDSTAD.
Last night. You know the parson's dame--

FALK.
What? It was she, then, who--

GULDSTAD.
Who lit the flame.
Long I remembered her with keen regret,
And still in my remembrance she arose
As the young lovely woman that she was
When in life's buoyant spring-time first we met.
And that same foolish fire you now are fain
To light, that game of hazard you would dare.
See, that is why I call to you--beware!
The game is perilous! Pause, and think again!

FALK.
No, to the whole tea-caucus I declared
My fixed and unassailable belief--

GULDSTAD [completing his sentence].
That heartfelt love can weather unimpaired
Custom, and Poverty, and Age, and Grief.
Well, say it be so; possibly you're right;
But see the matter in another light.
What love is, no man ever told us--whence
It issues, that ecstatic confidence
That one life may fulfil itself in two,--
To this no mortal ever found the clue.
But marriage is a practical concern,
As also is betrothal, m