I dwell upon the memories of this church and its surroundings, because during the two years I stayed at Trondenaes I was so strongly influenced by their power over the imagination.  The hollow ground with the supposed underground vaults were to me like a covered abyss, full of mysteries, and in the church—­whose silence I often sought, since it lies, with its strangely thought-absorbing interior, close to the parsonage, and, as a rule, stood open on account of the college organ practice—­daylight sometimes cast shadows in the aisles and niches as if beings from another age were moving about.

I made great progress in Latin and Greek under the teaching of the agreeable, well-informed minister, in whose house I lived, and in other subjects under one of the masters of the college; but in my leisure hours I sought the spots which gave so much occupation to my fancy, and therefore Trondenaes was anything but the right place for my diseased mind.

My nervous excitability has some connection with the moon’s changes as I have since noticed.  At such times the church exercised an almost irresistible fascination over me; I stole there unnoticed and alone, and would sit for hours lost in thought over one thing and another, indistinct creations of my imagination, and among them Susanna’s light form, which sometimes seemed to float towards me, without my ever being quite able to see her face.

It was late in the spring of the second year I was at Trondenaes, that one midday, being under the influence of one of these unhealthy moods, I sat in the church on a raised place near the high altar, meditating, with Susanna’s blue cross in my hand.

My eye fell on a large dark picture on the wall beside the altar, which I had often seen, but without its having made any special impression on me.  It represented in life-size a martyr who has been cast into a thorn-bush; the sharp thorns, as long as daggers, pierced his body in all directions, and he could not utter a complaint, because one great sharp thorn went into his throat and out at his open mouth.

The expression of this face struck me all at once as terrible.  It regarded me with a look of silent understanding, as though I were a companion in suffering, and would have to lie there when its torments had at last come to an end.  It was impossible to remove my eyes from the picture; it seemed to become alive, now coming quite near, now going far away into a darkness that my own dizzy head created.

It was as though in this picture the curtain was drawn aside from a part of my own soul’s secret history, and it was only by an effort of will, called forth by a fear of becoming too far absorbed into my own fancy, that I succeeded in tearing myself away from it.

When I turned, there stood in the light that fell from the window near the front pew, the lady with the rose.  She wore an expression of infinite sadness, as though she knew well the connection between me and the picture, and as if the briar-spray in her hand were only a miniature of the thorn-bush in which yonder martyr lay.