e action is prayer, and
whose whole life is prayer."

She rose up and stood again at the window, gazing long, in a reverie,
up at the starry sky. Out into the night flew something from Manna's
window and was caught in the branches of a tree; it was the girdle
which she had taken off.

As Eric was sitting alone in his room, he heard a gentle rustling, and
was startled as if he had seen a ghost. What is that? He opened the
door, and Manna stood before him. They silently embraced, and Manna
said:--

"I come to you; I am always with you in my thoughts,--in everything.
Oh, Eric! I am so happy, and so miserably wretched. My father--do you
know it?"

"I know everything."

"You know, and still love me?"

She kneeled down and embraced his feet. He raised her, and seating
himself by her side, they talked together of the dreadful secret.

"Tell me," she asked, "how you have borne it?"

"Ask rather, how Roland will bear it!"

"Do you think he will hear of it?"

"Certainly, who knows how soon the world----"

"The world! the world!" exclaimed Manna. "No, no; the world is good,
the world is beautiful. Oh, thanks to the Unsearchable for giving to me
my Eric, my world, my whole world!"

Calmly, clearly, and with wonderful insight. Manna apprehended
everything; but in the very midst of the recital, she suddenly threw
herself upon Eric's breast, and sobbed forth:--

"Oh! why must I have this knowledge so young, so early; why must I
experience and overcome all this?"

After Eric had calmed and soothed her, she went away.

An eye had watched, an eye had seen. But they knew not that an eye had
watched and an eye had seen.

In an eye had the morning, on awakening, Manna cried, "I am beloved!
his beloved! Is he awake yet, I wonder?"

She opened the window. A young starling, that was now, even in the
autumn, building its nest, found the thin hempen cord on the tree
before Manna's window, snapped it up in its bill, and flew away to
weave it into the nest. Eric was below in the garden, and Manna called
to him:--

"I'll be down immediately." And in the early dawn they embraced and
kissed each other, and spoke words of encouragement to one another,
needed for what must be borne to-day, for to-day her father and Pranken
were expected to return.

They went towards the green cottage hand in hand, sat down where they
had sat with the Mother on the previous day, and waited for her waking.
In the midst of all the joy and all th