“I have felt the same—­and I feel it more keenly now than ever,” answered the girl, nestling trustingly close to him.  “Each minute in your arms is worth more than all the rest of my life before.”

“And you are to me as the sap of the trees in spring, that thrills me with ecstasy and makes me forget all else.  And I will feel it so!—­drown my sad autumn and my joyless winter in the delight of spring.  And I bless the fate that led you to me—­there is none like you!”

“None?” the girl repeated happily, and yet in doubt.  “Oh, if only I could be as you think.”

“You are so!  Every drop of blood in you is love and fire.  The lightest touch of your shoe against my foot is more than the warmest embrace from any other—­your breath is like a secret caress; you bring a scent of hawthorn with you everywhere that lifts me almost to madness.”

“Do not talk like that, Olof.  I am nothing—­it is you that are all.  Tell me—­are all lovers as happy as we?”

“No.”

“Why not?  Is it because they—­they can’t love as we do?”

“They dare not!  They fear to be happy.  Oh, how blind the world is!  Wandering sadly with prayer, book and catechism in hand, when love and spring are waiting for all who will.  And those who have grown old, when their blood is as lead in their veins, and they can but gaze with beggars’ eyes on their own youth—­they would have us too slaves of the prayer book and catechism like themselves.”

“Is it really so...?”

“Yes, it is true.  Only while we are young, only while the flood of youth runs free and bright in our veins can we be happy.  And they are the greatest who dare to demand their share of life in full, to plunge unafraid into the waters, letting the waves break on their temples and life’s salt flood wash their cheeks.”

“And have I dared all this, Olof?  Tell me, have I not?”

“Yes, you have.  And it is just that which makes you lovely and bewitching as you are.  It is a glorious thing to give oneself lip entirely to another, without question, without thought of return or reckoning—­only to bathe body and soul in the deep wells of life!”

“Yes, yes....  And, do you know, Olof...?” The girl spoke earnestly, with a quiver in her voice.

“What?  Tell me?”

But she could say no more, and, bursting into tears, hid her burning cheek against his breast, her body shaking with sobs.

“What—­child, you are crying?  What is it?”

“I don’t know....”  The girl was sobbing still.  “Only that I can’t—­can’t give you all I would.”

“But you have given me more than I ever dared to hope for!”

“Not so much as I gladly would!  Why do you not ask more of me?  Tell me to die with you, and I am ready—­I could die by fire with you.  Or take my life now, here, this moment....”

The fire of her increasing passion seemed to have sent out a spark that glowed and burned in his soul.