Olof was waiting—­she could see it in his eyes.

“You know, I need not tell you how it has made me suffer,” she said, turning towards him.  “And when the second time came, and I was again to be a mother, I wept and prayed in secret—­and my prayer was heard.  It was a girl—­and her father’s very image.  And after that I felt safe, and calm again....”

She marked how Olof sighed, how the icy look seemed to melt from his eyes.

And she herself felt an unspeakable tenderness, a longing to open her heart to him.  Of all she had thought of in those years of loneliness—­life and fate and love....  Had he too, perhaps, thought of such things?  And what had he come to in the end?  She herself felt now that when two human beings have once been brought together by fate, once opened their hearts fully to each other, it is hard indeed for either to break the tie—­hardest of all for the woman.  And first love is so strong—­because one has dreamed of it and waited for it so long, till like a burning glass it draws together all the rays of one’s being, and burns its traces ineffaceably upon the soul....

But his tongue was tied, as if they had been altogether strangers during those past years; as if they had nothing, after all, to say to each other but this one thing.  And it was of this he was thinking now—­with thoughts heavy as sighs.

“Life is so—­and what is done cannot be undone—­there is no escape....”

Those were Olof’s words—­all that he found to say to her in return.

“Escape?  No!  All that has once happened sets its mark on us, and follows us like a shadow; it will overtake us some day wherever we may go—­I have learned that at least, and learned it in a way that is not easy to forget.”

“You—­have you too...?” Again she felt that inexpressible tenderness, the impulse to draw nearer to him.  How much they would have to say to each other—­the thoughts and lessons of all those years!  She knew it well enough for her own part, and from his voice, too, she knew it was the same.  And yet, it could not be.  They seemed so very near each other, but for all that wide apart; near in the things of the past, but sundered inevitably in the present.  Their hearts must be closed to each other—­it showed in their eyes, and nothing could alter that.

...  What happened after she hardly knew.  Had they talked, or only thought together?  She remembered only how he had risen at last and grasped her hand.

“Forgive me,” he said, with a strange tremor in his voice, as if the word held infinitely much in itself.

And she could only stammer confusedly in return:  “Forgive...!”

She hardly knew what it was they had asked each other to forgive, only that it was something that had to come, and was good to say, ending and healing something out of the past, freeing them at last each from the other....

One thing she remembered, just as he was going.  She had felt she must say it then—­a sincere and earnest thought that had often been in her mind.