“Are you sure you knew what I meant?” she asked.  “I hadn’t finished, you know....”

“What—­not finished yet?”

“No!”

She drew her hands away, and as if summing up all she had said before, she clasped his knees and looked imploringly into his eyes.

“Give me that mark!”

Olof shivered—­waves of heat and cold seemed passing through his body.

“No, no—­my love!  You must not ask that of me—­it is more than I can do,” he went on bitterly.

“You can, if you only will.  Love can do all things.”

“But now—­after what you have said....”

“But you said yourself it was so pretty.”

“Yes—­there is a lovely thought in it—­but the end was too horrible—­you know what I mean.”

“That was the loveliest of all.  Oh, won’t you do what I ask?” Her lips trembled, and she looked at him entreatingly.

Olof sighed deeply; drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.  “How can I refuse you anything?  But—­but I could never forget it if I did, and....”

“Oh ...  I almost thought that was how it would be.  You cannot understand—­for you are not me.  But something I must have!” she went on passionately.  “I cannot live without.  Look!” She drew from her breast a little case of blue silk, hung by a red cord round her neck, “See—­it just reaches to there!”

“It’s very pretty,” said Olof in relief, taking the case in his hand.”  And you want something to put in it?”

“Yes.”

“A lock of hair or something?  Are you as childish as all that?”

“No—­not as childish as all that.”

“A flower, then—­or what?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“You want me to write something, then?”

“No, no.  I want yourself—­your very self!”

Olof looked at her blankly—­he could not guess what was in her mind.  He felt himself more and more in the power of something he had been striving to escape.

“Oh, don’t you understand?  Your portrait.”

“But—­but I have only one.  And—­I have never given anyone my portrait.”

“No,” said the girl confidently.  “You have kept it for me.”

Olof felt himself shamed.  What a poor creature he was grown!  Why could he not rise up and take this strange rare child in his arms, and swear by all he revered that she had touched his inmost heart, that he was hers alone, for ever?

He sprang to his feet, and cried earnestly, “Yes!  It was taken for you, and for no other!”

But the words ended in a sob—­it was as if his blood were turned to sand.  With trembling fingers he took out the portrait, and sank down as if paralysed into his seat.

The girl watched him with a starry gleam of ecstasy in her eyes.

But he could not meet her glance—­he bent his head, thinking bitterly to himself, “What have I come to?  Why do I cheat her and myself, why do I give these beggar’s crumbs to one that should have all?”