Two days after, I followed Susanna’s remains to the grave.

* * * * *

One sunshiny day in winter, when I as usual visited the place where she rested in the churchyard, the snow had drifted over her grave.  It lay pure and dazzlingly white, with the fine upper edge like translucent marble in the sunlight.

I took this to mean that Susanna would have me think of her in her shining bridal dress before God, in order to give me courage to go my lonely way through life, and not to fear that the hardest of all trials—­even insanity, if it came and enthralled me in its confusion—­could separate us.

* * * * *

Late in the summer, when I was to go south by the steamer, together with the minister and his wife, who had both, in a short time, aged perceptibly, and who were now moving to a southern parish, I went for the last time to take leave of my sorrowful friend, the clerk.

He played the beautiful, joyful, beloved piece again for me, which he had composed when he was twenty, and which I had thought suited Susanna and me so well, and now he played the continuation too—­it was wonderfully touching and sad, but with comfort in it, like a psalm.

* * * * *

Thus ends a poor, delicate Nordlander’s simple story; for to tell how, with my father’s help, I became a student with “laud” [There are four grades in the Academic Degrees Examination—­viz., laudabilis prae ceteris, laudabilis, haud illaudabilis, and non-contemnendus.]—­he died the same year that I passed my Examen artium, a respected but ruined man—­and how I afterwards became something of a literary man, a private tutor and a master in a school, is only to relate the outward circumstances of a monotonous life, whose thoughts all dwell in the past.

My love for Susanna has, as she said to me with such confidence, been the fountain of health that saved me from the worst madness.  When restlessness came over me, and I roamed about aimlessly in field and forest, it always came to a crisis, when I saw her, in her white dress, floating by a little way off, or sometimes even coming gently towards me; then the danger was over for the time.

During the last two years, when I have been getting worse, I have not been fortunate enough to see her, and have had a dreary time, often as if the darkness were closing helplessly round me.

But not long ago, as I lay ill in my garret, Susanna came one night, when the full moon was shining, up to the bed, in her white bridal dress, with a wreath upon her beautiful hair, and beckoned to me with the hand that bore the ring.  I know she came to bring me the glad tidings that I shall soon go hence and see again the love of my youth.

* * * * *