The girl sat still with the same light of wonder in her eyes, looking now at the portrait, now at Olof himself.

“Yes, it is really you,” she said at last, and touching the picture with her lips, she laid it in the case, and slipped it into her bosom.

“Now I have nothing more to ask,” she said.  “I shall thank you all my life for this.  When you are gone, you will be with me still.  I can talk to you at night before I sleep, and in the morning you will be the first thing I see.  I can whisper to you just as I used to do.  And when I am dead, you shall be buried with me.”

Olof was overwhelmed with emotion—­it was as if something within him had been rent asunder.  He looked at the girl’s face—­how pure and holy it was!  Why could not he himself be as she was?  What was it that had happened to him?

He felt an impulse to throw himself on the floor at her feet and tell her all—­and then rise up young and pure and whole again, able to feel as others did.  But he could not; an icy voice within him told that the days of his spring-time were gone for ever.  And as he felt her arms about him once more, he could only bend down humbly and touch her hair with his lips in silence, as if begging her to understand.

Warm drops were falling on his knees, warm drops fell on her hair.  Welling from deep sources—­but unlike, and flowing different ways.

DARK FURROWS

Sunday morning—­a calm and peaceful time.  Olof was up, and sat combing his hair before the glass.

“Those wrinkles there on the temples are getting deeper,” he thought.  “Well, after all, I suppose it looks more manly.”

He laid down the comb, turned his head slightly, and looked in the glass again.

“Paler, too, perhaps,” he thought again.  “Well, I’m no longer a boy....”

He moved as if to rise.

“Look once more—­a little closer,” urged the glass.

Olof brushed his moustache and smiled.

“Can’t you see anything?” the glass went on, with something like a sneer.  “Under the eyes, for instance?”

And suddenly he saw.  The face that stared at him from the glass was pale, and marked by the lines and wrinkles of those past years.  And under the eyes were two dark grey furrows, like heavy flourishes to underline a word.

“Is it possible?” he cried, with a shudder.

“Is it any wonder?” said the glass coldly.

The face in the glass was staring at him yet, with the dark furrows under the eyes.

“But what—­how did they come there?” asked Olof in dismay.

“Need you ask?” said the glass.  “Well, you have got your ‘mark,’ anyhow—­though it was not one you asked for.”

* * * * *

The face in the mirror stared at him; the dark furrows were there still.  He would have turned his head away, or closed his eyes, but could not.  He felt as if some great strong man were behind him with a whip, bidding him sternly “Look!”