But as she touched the pillows and the white linen she had worked with such hopes and kisses and loving thoughts for this very night, she broke down, and stood with quivering shoulders, fumbling with the bedclothes to hide her emotion.

Olof felt his eyelids quivering, warm drops fell on his cheek.  He rose and stepped softly to her side.

“Kyllikki,” he whispered entreatingly, “have you forgiven me—­everything?”

“Yes, everything,” she answered, smiling through her tears, and threw her arms round his neck.  “It was childish of me to cry.”

Gratefully, and with a new delight, he pressed her to his heart....

* * * * *

“Olof, don’t put out the light yet—­let it burn till the morning.”

Kyllikki lay stretched on the sofa.  Olof nodded, and laid himself down with his head in her lap and his feet on a chair by the side.

And two pairs of darkly glistening eyes fell to whispering together, like lonely stars in a dark autumn sky, while the earth sighed through the gloom.

THE SOMNAMBULIST

Olof was a sleep-walker, though he never dared to confess it even to himself.  There was something mysterious and terrifying in the thought.

A soul that cannot rest, but goes forth when others sleep, on errands of its own; the body follows, but without consciousness.  The eyes are open, but they see only that which the soul is pleased to notice on its way.  It will climb like a squirrel to the roof, walk along narrow ridges at a giddy height.  It will open windows and lean out over black depths, or play with keen-edged weapons as if they were toys.  And the onlooker, in his waking senses, shudders at the sight, realising that it is the soul stealing forth on its nightly wanderings.

So it had been with Olof for a long time now—­almost from the time when Kyllikki first became his.

The scene of their bridal night was forgotten; neither ever hinted at what had passed.  They had tried to fuse with each other in the deep and beautiful relationship which had its roots deep in the soul of both, and in the earnest striving that was to clear and cultivate the ground on which their future should be built.

Olof was proud of his wife; she moved with the beauty of a summer Sunday in their new home—­calm and clear-eyed, ever surrounded by a scent of juniper or heather.  And he was filled with gratitude, respect, and love for her—­for her tender and faithful comradeship.

Then, like a bird of night on silent wings, came this walking in his sleep.

It had happened many times without his knowing it.  And still he refused to believe it, though he had more than once been on the point of waking to full consciousness.  And he was glad that Kyllikki seemed to suspect nothing—­for she said no word.  He dreaded most of all the hour when she should wake and speak to him reproachfully:  “Are my arms not warm enough to hold you; can your soul not find rest in my soul’s embrace?”