“Do you know what I think?  I think that human beings are endlessly rich and deep, like Nature itself, that is always young, and only changes from one season to another.  All that has happened to me before seems now only the rising of sap in spring.  Now summer comes for the first time—­all calm and warmth and happiness.  I have been like a fairy palace, with a splendid hall to which none could find the key.  But you had it all the time—­the others could enter this little room or that, but only you had the key to the best of all.”

“Is it really true, Olof?  Oh, I shall remember those words for ever!”

“It is true—­you were the first that taught me how deep and mysterious, how wonderful, the love of a man and a woman can be.  That it is not just a chance meeting, and after that all kisses and embraces and overflow of feeling.  But a quiet, calm happiness in the blood, like the sap in the trees, invisible, yet bearing all life in itself; speechless, yet saying everything without a single touch of our lips.”

“Yes,” said the girl earnestly.  “But did you not know that before?  I have always felt it so.”

“No—­I did not realise that it was so intimate a part of our nature; that it was the foundation of life and happiness for all on earth.  Now at last I understand that we are nothing without one another—­we are as earth without water, trees without roots or mould; or as the sky without sun and moon.  And I know now much that I did not know before—­the secret of all existence, the power that sustains us all.”

“And you know that it is love—­the greatest of all!  But why does no one ever speak of it—­I mean, of love itself, not merely the name?”

“I think it must be because it is too deep and sacred a thing to talk about; we do not understand it ever until we have experienced it each for himself.  And those that have—­they must be silent—­for it is a thing to live on, not to talk about.  Do you know, I have just remembered something I once saw.  Just a scene in a poor little hut—­but it explains it all....”

“Something you have seen yourself?”

“Yes.  It was many years ago.  It was a cold winter day, and I came to this hut I was speaking of—­’twas a miserable place to look at.  The windows were covered with frost, and an icy draught came through cracks in the walls.  Two children were sitting by the stove, warming their feet that were all red with cold; the other two were quarrelling over the last crust of bread.”

“Were they so poor as that?” asked the girl, her voice quivering with sympathy.

“Poor as could be.  And in a heap of rags on the bed lay the mother, with a newborn child—­the fifth.  The man was sitting at the table.  He looked at the children on the floor, and then at the mother and her little one in bed—­looked at them—­and laughed!  And the joy in his pale, thin face—­it was a wonderful sight....”

“And the mother?” asked the girl eagerly.  “Was she happy too—­more than he?”