WHEN Cordt had finished telling the story of the old room, he sat by the window and looked across the square, where the dusk was gathering about the newly-lighted lamps.

The servant entered noiselessly and lit the chandelier and went out noiselessly again. And the light filled the whole of the room and fell upon Cordt, who sat and gazed before him, and upon Finn, who stood by him with his eyes fixed on his face.

But Finn and Cordt were not where the light found them.

They were in the wonderful mystery of the old room. They heard the rippling of the fountain outside in the silent square; they saw the blaze of the red flowers on the balcony. The slender notes of the spinet sounded in their ears; Fru Adelheid’s white gown rustled over the floor.

And, when Cordt turned his face towards his son, he appeared to Finn as a very big, old man; and Finn seemed to Cordt the little child that once lay and laughed in the cradle and fought with its little fat fists.

Then Cordt stood up and took Finn’s arm and they walked to and fro, silent, overcome with what they had seen and afraid lest they should shatter the dream by speaking.

They walked for some time. And, when, at length, they stopped before the window, which was dewed with the heat, so that they could see nothing through it, Cordt remembered that there was still something which Finn ought to know and which he could not ask about.He looked at Finn and remembered how he had loved his mother.

It was her eyes, but more restful-looking; her mouth, but paler and tired, as though it had tried a thousand times to say something which it never could. He had her slender waist and he was taller than Cordt, but carried his height like a burden. Then he also had Fru Adelheid’s pale cheeks and forehead, but Cordt’s hair, only thicker still and blacker.

“Finn,” said Cordt and laid his hands on his shoulders.

Finn started and could not look at him. But Cordt took him under the chin and lifted his head and looked with a sad smile into his frightened eyes:

“There is only one thing left to tell you, Finn.... Fru Adelheid did not take a lover.”

His smile widened when he saw his son’s sudden and great joy; and he drew him to him and kissed him.

But then he suddenly left him and sat down somewhere in the room, with his back to him. Finn followed him and stood by him for a while and thought kindly and fondly of him and could find nothing to say.

The thoughts rushed through Cordt’s head.

Now that he had lived through it all anew, the scab broke which the silence of many years had placed upon the wound in his will. His eyes grew hard and angry, he wanted to speak as he used to speak when he fought his hopeless fight for Fru Adelheid.

But then his glance fell upon Finn.

He sat as he liked best to sit, with bent head and his hands open upon his knees.

And Cordt grew gentle again and said, softly:“You are glad, of course. For, you see, she is your mother.”

He crossed the room and came back and stood with his arm over the back of the chair and looked at Finn, who was lost in his thoughts. It was silent in the room and silent outside, for it was Sunday. They could hear the bells ringing for evening service.

“She never secured the red flowers in the place of the blue which she valued so little,” said Cordt, “I don’t know ... I often thought....”

The bells rang out.

There was one that was quite close and one that was farther away, but louder, nevertheless. And there was a sound of distant bells which could not be distinguished from one another, but which sang in the air.

It sounded louder than it was, because they were thinking of it; and the ringing grew and filled the room with its deafening clamor.

Then there came a rumbling in the gateway. The carriage drove out in the soft snow, where they could not hear it.

“That’s Fru Adelheid going to church,” said Cordt.

He sat down by his son and began to talk in a low voice and without looking at him.

The bells rang and then suddenly stopped and increased the silence a hundredfold.

“There was a night at Landeck when the bells caught her, a night following upon a day of sunshine and merriment and many people. She was the gayest of us all and, in the evening, all at once, she became silent and tired, as so often happened, without any cause that I knew of.... You were with us. You were ten years old then; you lay and slept. We had been standing together by your bed and looking at you and she began to cry and I could do nothing but hold her hand in mine and stop speaking.”

Finn listened, as he had just listened to the bells, without making out what the words had to tell him. He only knew that his mother was without blame and that his father had been able to tell it him all on that day and to leave it to him to pronounce judgment between himself and her. His joy at this sang within him and made all the rest easy and light and indifferent.

And Cordt continued:

“Then I went out on the verandah with my cigar and she stood in the doorway and listened to the bell of a little chapel up in the mountains, where we had been during the day. We had heard the story when we were there. Once, in the old days, a pious man had built the chapel in expiation of a sin and, since then, the bell had rung two hours after midnight every day.... She asked whether it would go on ringing till the end of the world and we came to talk of all the bells that ring over the earth, by day and by night, sun up and sun down, and comfort weary mortals.... Sometimes she was silent. But the bell rang up there constantly. And she constantly began to talk again and constantly about the same thing. About the bells that sounded so eternally and so identically over the whole world ... about those who heard them for the first time, one day when they were running like wild heathens in the endless wood ... about those whose will suddenly broke in the midst of the modern crowd, so that they fell on their knees and crept away where the bells summoned them.”

Finn looked up. The words now caught his mind and he woke from his dreams.

“I see her before me still, as she stood on the night when she carried her soul to God. Her strange eyes lifted to the stars ... her white face ... her hands ... and her words, which came so quickly, as though her life depended upon their coming, and so heavily, as though every one of them caused her pain. She never gave it a thought that I was there: she spoke as though she were doing public penance in the church-porch.... And then she declared that it was over.... It had become empty around her and cold and dark to anguish and despair, there where her glad eyes had beamed upon the lights and the crowd of the feast. Despair had come long since and slowly and she had closed her eyes to it and denied it. It had grown and come nearer to her and she had run away from it, as though she were running for her life. Now it was there and reached from earth to heaven, in her, around her, far and wide. And, if the bells could not conquer it, then she must die.”

Cordt spoke so softly that Finn could hardly catch his words.

“Then the bell up there ceased. Soon after, the day dawned and the sun shone on her white, moist cheeks. She was still now and silent, but her thoughts were the same. When things began to stir around us, in the town and at the hotel, she went out, I did not know where, but I daresay she was at the chapel. Towards evening, she returned and, at midnight, we sat on the verandah again and listened to the church-bell.... A week passed thus. I often feared for her reason. She always talked of the same thing and it was almost worse when she was silent. I sent old Hans home with you and, the next day, we left. But it was long before we reached home. She wanted to travel by the same road which we had taken on the journey out. She said she wanted to pray in every church which she had passed on her hunt for happiness through the world.”

Finn half raised himself in his chair:

“And did you?” he asked.

“I did as she wished. It became a pilgrimage to every region where life lies nakedest in its pleasure. Restlessly we travelled from place to place. She omitted none, afraid lest there should remain a single sin which she had not prayed away, a single memory which the bells had not rung into the grave.”

“And then did you come home?”

Cordt looked at his son as if he had forgotten that he was in the room. He suddenly awoke to the consciousness of what lay between those days and these; and his face became so gloomy and his eyes so serious that Finn was frightened.

“Then we came home. And then....”

He rose quickly and stood with his arms crossed on his breast and looked at Finn:

“Then we came home. And the years passed and Fru Adelheid recovered her peace of mind. She found herself again and became the same as in the old days. Her thoughts waver restlessly, her desires yearn insatiably. Her carriage now rattles through the streets as before ... only it stops at the church instead of the theatre.”

Finn wanted to speak, but could not, because Cordt stood in front of him and looked at him fixedly and nodded to him, once, as if to say that he knew what it was and that it was no use.

“She goes to Heaven’s table,” said Cordt, “and Heaven comes to her parties.”Finn sank back in his chair.

He was surprised and ashamed that he was not grieved with his father for saying that, nor with his mother, if it were true. He knew that he ought to rouse himself to protest or sympathy, but could not, because he understood it all so well.

But Cordt crossed the room with a firm stride:

“Heaven is not what Fru Adelheid thinks, nor where she seeks it,” he said. “Perhaps you will not understand me until you have lived longer in the world; but look here, Finn ... what I have seen of God in my life I have seen most in those who denied Him. In their sense of responsibility, in their humanity ... in their pride I have seen God’s splendor. The others, those who confess His name and fill His house ... they masked Him from me so closely, when they ought to glorify Him, made Him so small, when they praised His might....”

He talked about this for a time. Finn sat dumb and helpless in his chair and wished his father would cease. He felt like one who has inadvertently witnessed something he ought not to see, or like one who is receiving a confidence under a false pretence.

And deep down within him lay a little ironical astonishment at the fire and authority with which his father was talking.

But, at that moment, Cordt sat down in front of him with both his hands in his own and sad and gentle eyes and words as soft and humble as though he were a sinner begging for peace:

“I don’t know, Finn. I cannot really tell you anything about it. I can never talk with you about these things. A father is a poor creature, Finn, and I am a poor father. I cannot tell you that the forest is green and that the birds sing and that there is nothing behind the blue sky. I dare not, Finn. I do not think I have the right to. I cannot go to church with you, either ... nor even be glad when you go with your mother.”

He pressed Finn’s hands nervously. They lay dead in his and Finn did not know what to do with his eyes.

“But I must talk to you a little ... just this once ... to-day, when I have confessed to you and made up your parents’ accounts. If you will try to understand me ... and to forgive me ... to forgive us, because we are not so rich as our child could expect ... since we have a child.... You love the bells, Finn. When they ring, you fall a-dreaming; they ring you far away from where you are. You were like that ever since you were a little boy. And I can well understand it. I love them, too. I am glad because they are there. But ... Finn ... Finn, there are so many bells in the world besides those which summon us to church. Every man has his own, which are his and his only ... which he alone can hear, which call no one but him. There are men, opulent, charming men, for whom the bells ring wherever they set foot. They lead more powerful lives than we and prouder lives. They suffer us ... those of us who love them. But there is not in the world a man so small but that the bells call him. One has them in his work, Finn. And one in his child ... and one in his love. For one they hang in a neat little room where his mother lives and where he can only come for an hour, perhaps ... on a Sunday.... It is not the same for the one as for the other, Finn, but the bells are there always. They call their man back when he has strayed from the way he should go, or, if that is too late, they ring for his remorse. They ring to the banquet and they ring their music when he is tired and sad.... But the church-bells ... they ring for the man whose ears life has deafened ... and life makes such a terrible noise. They ring on Sundays to remind us of that which we have forgotten throughout the week.... And it is well that they are there.... But ... Finn ... it is so tragic when the church-bells drive and tumble people together who once had each his own sacred church. It is just as when a home breaks up and the old find a refuge in the workhouse. The sun shines through the windows and it is warm indoors and there are flowers in the casement. But there was once something that was better.... For your mother and me, Finn ... for us the bells used to ring in the old room.”

He was silent and no longer looked at Finn. And Finn was at ease again and at last found words for what he had long wanted to say:

“May I use the old room, father? May I set it up again ... all as it was ... and live there with my books?...”

Cordt released his son’s hands and his face wore a look that made Finn regret his request. They both rose to their feet. And, at that moment, Cordt’s face lit up with a smile:

“That you may,” he said. “You dear child, who never asked for anything. Let this, then, be my present to you to-day.”

This happened on the day when Cordt’s son completed his twenty-first year.

Finn stood in the old room with the yellow document in his hand:

“God brought me thus far, that I was able to erect this fair house, which shall stand till distant times, a witness to my might and that of my race. Here shall be upright living and generous dealing; the house shall be faithfully guarded from father to son; good men and women shall sit in the hall and dance to the sound of flutes and violins.

“I have placed this room in the most secret part of the house and no one knows of it but the architect who built it and my oldest servant. But I have sealed the architect’s tongue with a solemn oath and a heavy fee; and my servant is true to me.“I have decorated the room with gilt and figured leather hangings and costly carpets from the East. I have had two great armchairs made in Milan, whose woodwork is carved into birds and animals which grin strangely in the dark, but cease to do so when the lights are lit.

“Then I gave my servant a key of the room and told him to care for it faithfully. Every evening, when it grows dusk, he is to light the candles on the mantelpiece; and he is to do this even if he know that his master is travelling in distant lands. Every morning, he is to adjust the room with his own hands. None but himself is ever to cross the threshold.

“For this room shall be for me and my wife and for none other in the world. Therefore I placed it in the most secluded part of the house, far from the counting-house, where we work, from the passages, along which our servants go, and from the drawing-room, where we receive our guests, ay, even from our marriage-bed, where she sleeps by my side.

“It shall be the temple of our marriage, hallowed by our love, which is greater than anything that we know. Here we will pray to Him Who gave us to each other. Here we will talk gladly and earnestly, every evening when our hearts impel us to. And, when we come to die, our son shall bring his wife here and they shall do as we did.

“This evening, which is the first in my new house, I brought my wife in here and told her my wish. She listened to my words in love and gladness and I have written down in this document how it all happened and we have set our names to it in witness for those who come after us.”

Finn read their names and the names of those who had taken possession of the room after the builder and his wife. Last of all stood Cordt’s name and Fru Adelheid’s, which were struck out again.

Then he put the document back in its place and locked it up and looked round the room.

The old room stood again as it used to stand, built high over the square, long and deep and silent, like a spot where there is no life.

The balcony was white with snow and the sparrows hopped in the snow. Inside, behind the colored panes, stood many red flowers and longed for the sun. The dust had been removed from the figured-leather hangings, which shone with a new brightness. The oriental carpet spread over the floor like a lord returning from exile and once more taking possession of his estates.

And all the old glories had found their places again and stood as lawfully and restfully as though it had never been otherwise. The spinet was there and the jar with the man writhing through thorns and the celestial globe whose stars shone and ran: all the furniture which the room’s different owners had set there in the course of time, each after his own taste and heart.

Before the fireplace stood the two great, strange armchairs.

Finn felt as if he were in a cathedral where every flag was a tombstone over a famous man. His senses drank the odor of the bygone times, his fancy peopled the room with the men and women who had sat there and exchanged strong and gentle words, while the house lay sleeping around them.

With it all, he became lost in thought of those who had sat there last and after whom no others were to come, those two who had given him the life which he knew not what to do with.He saw them before him in the love and struggle of their youth. He heard their voices in the room, he saw Fru Adelheid’s red mouth and Cordt’s steady eyes. He saw Cordt bring his wife into the room, which was the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber, and show her the strange things which his ancestors had put there.

He saw him on the day when he stood alone by the fireplace ... in the empty room ... and struck out his own name and Fru Adelheid’s from the document and went away and left the door open behind him....

He saw all this as it had happened. But they were not his father and mother. They were two attractive people of whom he had read in a book and grown fond, as a man loves art, palely and with no self-seeking in his desire.

Finn drew one of the big chairs over to the window and sat down and sat there for long.

He was sitting there when Fru Adelheid came.

She stood in the doorway, in her white gown, with her white hair, and nodded to him. Then she turned her face round to the room and looked at it.

And then that happened which was only the shadow of a dream that vanished then and there: everything came to life in the room.

The spinet sang, the queer faces on the old chairs raised themselves on their long necks; there was a whispering and a muttering in every corner....

Fru Adelheid shrank back against the door. She did not see Finn, did not remember that he was there.

But Finn saw her.

He rose from his chair and his eyes beamed:“You light up the room, mother,” he said, “and the room lights up you.”

He took her hand and kissed it and, with her hand in his, Fru Adelheid went through the old room, which had been too narrow for her youthful desires.

The fairy-tale was over and the dread. But the glow still lay over her figure and made her look wonderfully pretty. Her cheeks were as pink as a girl’s; her step was light, her eyes moist and shy. She laughed softly and gladly, while she looked at the old things and talked about them and touched them.

She told the story of the woman who used to sing when she was sad and who had brought the old spinet there; and her hands shook as she struck a chord and the slender, beautiful notes sounded through the room. Of the spinning-wheel, which had whirred merrily every evening for many a good year and which stood as it was, with thread upon the spindle. Of the celestial globe, which had been the toy of the man whose intellect was obscured. Of the doll with the vacant face, which stood there in memory of the lady who dreaded the deep silence of the room and never entered it but once; but her son, who loved her, had hidden the doll in the curtain. Of Fru Lykke, whose portrait had hung where the light stain was, but hung there no longer, because her marriage had been dissolved.

Of the jar with the man writhing through thorns, which she herself had brought as her gift, she said nothing. She passed her hand over its bright surface and was silent.

Finn’s eyes clung to her.

Never had he seen his beautiful mother so beautiful. He did not know that look, or that smile on her mouth, or that clear ring in her voice.At times, he added something to what she was telling and spoke with such profound intelligence that she was quite surprised and frightened. Now he guessed her words before she uttered them. Then he knew something which she had never suspected.

Secretly, her fear increased as to what Cordt could have told him.

But Finn was lost in his delight.

And, fascinated by her beauty and the strange things he had seen and heard and the deep silence of the room, he forgot that the seal of the old room was broken and wished to play the game as vividly as possible.

He drew the second of the two big chairs across to the window and made her sit down and sat himself beside her:

“Now you are not my mother,” he said. “You are my young bride. I have brought you into the sanctuary to-day and now I will initiate you into the mysteries.”

Fru Adelheid turned very pale and Finn took her hand penitently:

“Have I hurt you, mother?”

She shook her head and forced herself to smile.

Then he walked into the room again and rejoiced at all this and talked about it. But she remained sitting with knitted brow.

She was heavy at heart, because it seemed to her, all at once, that she was not his mother, as they sat talking here in the secret chamber of the house. The old days came in their great might; and their strong memories and impressive words drowned the bells which had rung her into another world.

It was the echo here, in the old room, of Cordt’s words and of his love ... of the strong faith and great happiness of the race which had sprouted in the good mould of tradition and produced flower after flower in the times that passed.

Fru Adelheid thought—for a moment—that it would have been well had things happened as Cordt wished.

But, at the same instant, she was seized by a thought that suddenly made her rebellious and young, as when she was here last, many years ago.

She thrust her chair back hard and looked with sparkling eyes round the room where everything and every memory was hostile to her.

She looked at Finn, who was standing by the celestial globe and trying to set it going, but could not, because the spring was rusty and refused to work.

She wondered, when the time came for Finn to take a wife ... would he try to revive the tradition and bring her here and sit down with her in the old chairs?Then Finn’s son and his son after him would read her name, which was written on the yellow document and struck out again. She would be like one of those who were branded in that family.... Legends would grow about her love of going out and her hunt after happiness which did not exist....

“Come and help me, mother,” said Finn.

She went over and pressed hard on the spring and the clockwork hummed.

“See how you let loose the magic,” he said.

He went on talking, delighted with the stars, which lit up and ran.

“Sit down here by me, Finn.”

She waited till he came and a little longer, as though she could not find the words she wanted, and did not look at him while she spoke:

“Finn” she said and put her hand on his shoulder and drew it away again immediately. “Finn ... once ... ever so many years ago, I was alone, one evening, in the old room. I had often been here before, you know ... with father. And I was under the power of the old room and never happy. I was young, Finn, and it went so terribly hard with my longing and my gladness. I could not understand that and could not mitigate it or get over it. For father belonged to the room and it was his and all the queer things in it and they were all against me. Every time I came to the door, my heart stopped beating.... And once I was inside ... it was ... it was as if my own words were taken from my tongue and others put in their place for me to speak ... beautiful words and good words, Finn, but not mine. But then, when I took courage and said what I wanted to say, it sounded as if I was defying the old room and father and God himself. And then....”

Fru Adelheid felt that she was on the point of betraying something great and fine that had been laid in her hands. She looked round as if she were afraid that there was some one in the room or that the room itself would rise up against her in its venerable might.

But there was no one and it was silent.

Then she turned her face to Finn and looked at him and said, gaily:

“But that evening, Finn, I broke the spell of the old room. I tore the veil from the Holy of Holies and saw that there was nothing behind it. For the first time, I breathed freely in my own home.”

Fru Adelheid did not tell how, at the same moment, she had been overcome by terror and fled from the room. But she did not gain what she thought by her lie. For Finn looked at her sorrowfully and said:“How could you do that, mother? How could you find it in your heart?”

“Are you also under the spell?” she asked.

There was in her tone a scorn which was stronger than she intended and which frightened herself. But Finn simply paid no attention to it:

“The old room no longer exists,” he said. “It is nothing more than an image, a monument ... my fancy, which father humored me in.”

She turned her face away and listened.

“But had I lived in the days of the old room,” he said, “then it would certainly have captured me and held me captive.”

“Yes ... you have been talking to father,” she said, softly.

“Yes.”

Then he lay down before her, with his cheek on her hand, as he so often did:

“Yes,” he repeated. “And ... mother ... I love you. You are so pretty. But we will not talk about the old room ... ever. For I think it is the most wonderful ... and the most beautiful and the strongest thing I know of.... But it hurts me that I am not wholly your son ... or father’s either, that I might devote myself to one of you in sharing your strongest feelings. And I cannot talk to father about it ... neither can we two, can we?”

Fru Adelheid did not answer him, but stroked his hair with her hand. Neither of them spoke and it was quite silent in the room.

In the silence she became herself again. The many moulded years came to their own again and the bells rang monotonously and ever more strongly from out of the noise of the world, which had drowned them.

She marvelled at the excitement into which the old room had thrown her. Quenched was the love which had made her its mistress and quenched the red desire which made it too narrow. She thought of Cordt, who had fought, she considered, for what was not worth fighting for. Sorrowfully she looked at her tall, silent boy, whose weary thoughts kept pace so well with her own.

She crossed her hands in her lap and the light faded in her eyes. The glow of the old room withdrew from her face, her words became restful as her thoughts.

Finn looked at her, but did not see this. For him, too, the fairy-tale was over. He was sitting in his chair again with bent head and his hands open on his knees.

And, without their doing anything or thinking of it, they came in their usual way to talk together. It was not any interchange of thoughts and still less a contest of opinions. They said nearly the same thing and, wherever the thoughts of the one roamed, he found the other’s. Often their words were solemn, but never powerful. Often the one was silent and agreed with the other. Many times they sat long without saying anything and thought they had told each other everything.

“Look,” said Finn, pointing out of the window. “How hideous!”

A hearse came trotting across the square.

He moved in his chair and said:

“A hearse should always drive at a foot’s pace, solemnly and ceremoniously ... always ... as though they were only driving the horses to water. And soldiers should always hold themselves stiff and starched, keeping step and time, even when they are taking their shoes to the cobbler’s. Then it would all be easier.”

He was silent for a while. Then he slowly turned his face to her:“I was talking about it to father the other day,” he said. “I happened to say something of the kind.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“I don’t know how it came about. But he laughed and said I ought to write an article about it or form a society for preserving the correct pace of hearses.”

Fru Adelheid smiled and laid her hands in her lap and looked at them.

“Then he suddenly became serious and came up to me and laid his hands on my shoulders: ‘Hearses ought to drive fast,’ he said, ‘gallop ... at a rousing pace. Away with the dead, Finn! Let life grow green and blossom!’”

“Father is so masterful,” said Fru Adelheid.

Finn nodded.

Then they began to talk about Cordt. They often did so. And they were always eager to find good words to praise him in. But under the words there lay the consciousness, like a secret understanding between them, that he was made of a coarser clay than they.

They never said this; but they felt a sort of patronizing pity for him, such as one feels for a person who runs and runs, when it is good to sit still.

But, when they talked together, Fru Adelheid knew that deep in Finn’s soul there lay a secret yearning towards just that masterful side in his father which frightened him.

It was so weak, only a pale reflection of her own young love, a distant echo of the voice which had stated Cordt’s case in her own heart when he was fighting to win her.

But it was enough to hurt her. She thought she only had her son for a time. She traced a certain disdain in the intimacy to which he admitted her. She thought there was something in him which was greater than what he gave her and which was Cordt’s or would become so.

And she realized that the fight for Finn would become harder than that which broke the seal on the door of the old room.

Finn was absorbed in what had filled his mind, the whole day, with light and color. He was thinking now of his mother’s visit to the room on the evening when she had broken the spell:

“I simply cannot understand how you could have the heart,” he said.

She knew at once what he meant, but said nothing.

“There ought to be some law, like that in the fairy-story, where he who lifted the veil had to die,” he said. “And there ought to be veils upon veils ... veils upon veils.... Can you bear to look at the sun, mother? Women ought to go in a veil and never ... never raise it, except when the occasion was so great that everything grew great.... And one ought not to see the people who play....”

Fru Adelheid half raised herself in her chair.

She wanted to tell him that, on that evening, she was punished for her presumption with the greatest terror which she had ever experienced in her life. But she could not. Then she said, quite quietly and with her eyes looking out over the square:

“And suppose there were some one who could not ... suppose the veil stifled one....”

Finn looked out into space like her:

“Veils upon veils.... Veils over the dead,” he said.

Fru Adelheid sighed and said nothing.

“Then one could live,” said Finn.

From that day onward, Finn only left the old room when obliged.

The spring had opened the fountain before the house and he was happy at its rippling, which never began and never stopped. The red flowers were put out on the balcony: when the wind blew, their petals fluttered right over into the basin of the fountain and rocked upon the water. He followed their dance through the air and wondered if they would reach their goal.

His best time was in the evening, when the square shone with a thousand lights.

He loved the dying day.

He knew every light that went out, every sound as it stopped. And he liked the sound best when it stopped and the light when it went out. He thought that the people who moved down below, disguised in the darkness, were of another kind or better than those whom the sun shone upon. He had no more to do with them than with the others; but he liked them better.

Then, when night came and the rippling of the fountain sang louder and louder through the silence and cries sounded from down below, no one knowing what they were, and solitary steps were heard, that approached and retreated again, then he lit the candles on the mantelpiece and sat down in one of the old chairs, there where the owners of the house and their wives had sat when the house slept and they had something to say to each other.

He looked round the room, where the things sang in every dark corner, and simply could not conceive that he had not known the old room before.

He was more at home here than anywhere else: here, where he was outside the world, which worried him, because it demanded that of him which he had not; here, where every spot and every object told how all had been said and done and accomplished in the old days, so that he had nothing else to do but listen wonderingly and rejoice at its marvellous beauty.

Then he fell a-dreaming and remained sitting till the lights went out.

“He does not sleep enough,” said Fru Adelheid, anxiously.

Cordt crossed the floor with the same thought in his mind. Then he stopped where she was sitting and looked at her:

“I wonder, is he ever awake, Adelheid?” he said.By day, Finn generally sat at the window and stared out, idly and silently, with his hands open on his knees.

Often, when Cordt was crossing the square, he thought that he could see Finn’s old face behind the window-panes. He would stop and nod and beckon to him.

But Finn never saw him. For he saw nothing positively.

And Cordt went on ... in and out ... constantly longing to see the strong air of the old room color his son’s cheeks and rouse his will ... constantly trusting that, sooner or later, this would happen.

He never went up there since the day when he and his old servant had arranged the room as it used to be.

And Finn was glad of this. He was so afraid lest that should happen that a long time passed before he could suppress his terror when he heard any one coming. And, even when he had recovered his composure, he knew that it would happen sooner or later and that the day of its happening would be a gloomy one.

For he well understood the eternal loving question in Cordt’s eyes and it hurt him and frightened him. He dreaded the craving in his affection, which was greater than a father’s. It was like that of a sovereign for the heir who is to occupy the throne after him.

And Finn could not take the reins of empire in his slack hands or bear the pressure of the crown upon his head, which ached at the mere thought of it.

But Fru Adelheid often came; and they two were comfortable up there, in the old room.

She came with no craving; and, if she was doubtful and restless, as she often was since Finn had moved up into the old room, then she would be quite silent when the door closed behind her.

Silent like Finn ... and like the big chairs and the jar with the man writhing through thorns ... silent like the spinning-wheel, which had whirred merrily every evening for many a good year and stood as it was with thread upon its spindle.

He looked at her and smiled and nodded when she spoke. He himself talked ... for long at a time and then stopped, without its making any difference, and listened to the rippling of the fountain and the voices in the old room, which always talked to him and plainest when Fru Adelheid was with him.

He told her that, when she came, the room was no longer his own.

For then he felt like a stranger, a man of another period, who should suddenly find himself in an old ruined castle, full of marvellous dangers and adventures, and stand face to face with the last of those who had lived the castle’s rich, wonderful life.

Once he spoke her name aloud just as she was entering at the door. It was dark in the room and his voice and figure were so like Cordt’s that she grew pale and frightened. But he did not see this and she forced a laugh and soon forgot it.

And, gradually, the wonderful solemnity of the old room retreated into the background, when they were both there, for they spent more and more of their time there and at last simply did not think they were together except there. But Finn was always able to summon it up when he wished.

They used to read together.

And that happened in this way, that one of them found a book, a treasure of silence and singing, which was the only sort that they felt equal to, and read it and gave it to the other, who then read it while they were together.

They found most of the books in foreign languages and it seemed as if there were no end of them. Also, the fact that the language was foreign made the book dearer to them, because it carried them farther afield.

When they had read one of these books, they lived in it for a time ... not in its action, among its characters, for there was no action and no characters, but in its music. They tuned their thoughts and words in its key.

Then they felt as if they had passed through some experience or as if they were travelling.

“The artist lives,” said Finn. “He makes the sky blue and grey for himself ... for himself and for us all. He wipes everything out with his hand and builds it up again ... greater, ever greater. He is the master. He is God.”

One day, he asked Fru Adelheid to sing.

She had not sung for many years, except in church, and was surprised at his request:

“I have given up singing, Finn.”

He lay down before her and looked up smiling into her face:

“I can remember so well when you used to sing,” he said. “You often sang to me when I was a boy. But one occasion ... one occasion I remember in particular. There were many visitors and I, of course, had long been in bed, but I was not asleep. For old Marie had promised to take me down to the dining-room when the people had got up from dinner and you were to sing. She told me that, when there was company and all the candles were lighted and you were prettiest and brightest, then you sang a thousand times more beautifully than usual.”

She took her eyes from his face and laid her head back in her chair.

“I kept awake till she came and it lasted long. But then I heard you and also saw you for a moment through the door.”

“And was it so nice?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “But I remember the many faces.... I should know them again if I saw them now, I think. And best of all I remember father’s.”

Fru Adelheid rose:

“What shall I sing?” she asked.

He laughed with content, went to the spinet and opened it. Then he took up one of the pieces of music:

“Look what I have found,” he said. “This was sung by the one who put the spinet here. Look, here is her name: she herself wrote both the words and the music.... See how pale the writing is ... and how distinct.”

Fru Adelheid stood with the old, yellow sheet in her hand. She hummed the tune and struck the keys.

Then she sat down to the spinet and sang:

She remained sitting a while with the old music-sheet in her hand. Then Finn said:

“She used to sing that. Do you know if she was happy, mother?”

“She was often sad,” said Fru Adelheid. “And, when she was sad, she sang.”

She put down the sheet and took up the first music-book that came to hand, but threw it aside, as though it had burnt her fingers.

It was the Lenore songs, which she had sung to Cordt.

She rose and went back to her place beside Finn. Then she sprang up and stood with her arms crossed on her breast and sat down again and stared with great eyes through the window:

“Finn ... if I sang it to you ... would you recognize the ... the song you heard when Marie carried you down...?”

He woke from his dream and looked at her in surprise:

“The song ... no ... I should not. Why, do you remember it?”

“No,” said Fru Adelheid.

They long sat silent. Twilight fell and it grew dark in the room.

“Mother,” said Finn, “what are women like?”

She turned her face slowly towards him. He did not look at her. His eyes were far away and she realized that he had forgotten his question or did not know that he had put it.

Fru Adelheid stood in her wraps at the window and looked out. The horses were stamping in the porch below; the footman stood by the carriage-door and waited.

They were going to the station to fetch Finn.

He had been abroad the whole summer.

This was the first time he had been away alone and he had not enjoyed himself abroad. From Florence, Spain and Paris he had written to ask if he might not come home. But Cordt was resolved that he should remain abroad for the time agreed upon.

He wrote oftenest to Fru Adelheid ... and stupidly and awkwardly, because he knew that his father would read the letters. Cordt noticed this, but said nothing. He hurried through the letters as though he were looking for something positive and put them down with a face as though he had not found it.

He always gave Fru Adelheid the letters he received, although she never asked for them.

Fru Adelheid looked impatiently at her watch. She sat down, closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the pane.

She thought how empty the house had been during the summer.

Cordt had not said a word about the old room, but, from the day when Finn had moved up there, things had altered between him and her. Something had happened ... something indefinite and nameless, but none the less fateful on that account.And, while Finn was abroad, this had grown between them ... without their doing anything to further or prevent it. Neither of them thought about it. Both led their own lives and drifted farther apart in their yearning for their quiet child. The day was long for them, their rooms were cold.

But inside her was a growing anxiety for Cordt, who became ever more silent and wore such a melancholy look in his eyes.

A door opened and she sprang up:

“We shall be late, Cordt.”

“Not at all,” he said, calmly. “You ordered the carriage too early.”

“Let us go, Cordt. We may just as well wait there as here.”

Cordt sat down with his hat on his knee and looked at her. She stood with bent head and buttoned her gloves.

“Sit down for a moment,” he said and pushed a chair towards her.“Do you want to talk to me?”

“Sit down, Adelheid,” he said, impatiently. “Sit down for a moment.”

Fru Adelheid leant against the chair and remained standing.

“It is long since we talked together, Adelheid ... many, many years. Do you know that?”

She shrugged her shoulders:

“Very likely,” she said and made her voice as firm as she could. “We have peace now, you see.”

Cordt nodded. He drummed with his fingers on his hat and looked out of the window:

“Yes ... yes, no doubt. We are old, Adelheid. As old as can be.”

“Is that what you wanted to say to me?”

“I am afraid for Finn,” said Cordt. “He will come home as pale as when he went away, a poor dreamer by the grace of God. To-morrow, he will be sitting up there and staring out at the life he dare not live.”

“Yes ... why should he be up in the old room?”

“It was he who asked me,” said Cordt, calmly. “I could not deny him his inheritance. He has the right to know the ground he sprang from.”

“And what then? Do you think you can bring the dead days to life again?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think that. I don’t want that.”

He was silent for a little. She did not take her eyes from his face. Then he said:

“Finn can build himself a new house, if he likes. Or he can refurnish his ancestral halls. And put in plate-glass windows and wide staircases and anything that suits him and his period. But he must know and be thankful that the walls are strong and the towers tall.”Fru Adelheid pushed back the chair she was leaning against:

“There does not appear to be room for a mother in your arrangement,” she said.

Her voice trembled, her eyes were large and angry. But Cordt rose and looked as calm as before:

“You went out of it, Adelheid. You did not wish to be there.”

She made no reply. She understood that he did not mean to consult her, to ask her for her help ... did not even want it.

“Adelheid ... now that Finn is coming....”

“Yes?...”

“I am afraid for him, Adelheid. And I would ask you to be on your guard and do him no harm. I believe that sometimes you smother his poor, dejected spirit. The peace which you have gained may be good in itself and good for you ... but he is young, you must remember. He is only at the start of life, he has no need for peace and resignation. What is a boon to you is death to him, perhaps....”

She took a step forward and raised her face close up to his:

“Now it has come to this, Cordt, that you think I am your enemy for Finn’s sake.”

“You may become so,” he said.

“You will drive me to it, Cordt.”

He took her hand and held it tight when she tried to draw it away:

“No,” he said. “No, Adelheid. I only want to warn you.”

The balcony-door was standing open, because they had forgotten to close it. But the weather was mild and there was hardly any wind. Now and again, a yellow leaf fell somewhere or other from the baluster. It began to grow dusk.

Fru Adelheid sat with her head in her hands and stared out before her.

Cordt’s words kept ringing in her ears. She did not think either that Finn was as he used to be. He was restless, could not sit still, talked more than usual:

“Wherever I went, I found the fountain outside,” he said. “It followed me throughout my journey. There was not a rushing noise so strong but the fountain sounded through it nor a night so still but it came rippling and sang me home again to the old room.... I wonder, did one of the owners of this house set it up?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes,” said Finn. “That must be it. I am sure of it. Perhaps it was the one who built the house. You see, it forms part and parcel of the old room ... it sums it all up. If there was nothing else but the fountain, it would all be here just the same. I must ask father.”

She shivered with cold and Finn shut the door:

“We are chilly people,” he said. “Both of us. We are not like father. He laughed at me yesterday when I came down to his room to say good-morning and wanted to shut the window. ‘Don’t, Finn,’ he said. ‘The autumn air is bracing and healthy, it makes one young again ... sit in the draught and don’t be afraid, old man that you are!’”

“Yes, father is strong.”

Finn looked at her stealthily.

He had soon understood that his parents had drifted apart while he was abroad; and he suffered in consequence. He was as kind and affectionate to his mother as ever; but his thoughts were always harking back to Cordt, whatever they might be talking of:

“Father is so sad,” he said.

“I haven’t noticed it.”

She colored after saying this. But Finn was not looking at her, scarcely heard her reply:

“It was strange, mother ... out there, on my journey, ever so many times I had a feeling that I came upon father. Wherever I went, I would suddenly hear his voice ... then he would be close to me, I walked with him, regulated my step by his and talked to him.”

He laid his head back in his chair and closed his eyes:

“Often it was as if he had been where I came and prepared everything for me, so that I saw him in every corner. Sometimes I felt that I must put off my departure until he came.”

“And did he come?”

“Always. Wasn’t that strange?”

“Yes.”

Fru Adelheid thought the sound of his voice was different from ordinary. He did not look at her, as he was used to do ... his thoughts were not with her.

“Where were you and father to-day?” she asked.

“We went out into the woods ... a long way out. Father was silent, but not so bored as at home. It was so lovely out there ... and so strange. One could hardly see a thing ... for the leaves falling.”

“Yes,” said Fru Adelheid.

Then she bent over him to look into his face, which had grown thinner and paler during the time that he was away:

“Finn,” she said, “was I not with you ... out there ... when you were travelling?”

Finn smiled and nodded his head:

“You came in your letters,” he said. “That father never did. But you were mostly here at home, where I was longing to be.”

She thought it was strange that he did not take her hand when he said that.

And, suddenly, she became conscious that she was sitting in terror lest he should slip away from her.

What had she to hold him with, if anything seized him that was stronger than their quiet life in these hours ... what had she, if he went...?

It seemed to her as though Cordt stood in the room and beckoned him out into the yellow woods, where the air was so bracing and good. And Finn leapt up with a joyful cry ... they went away ... and never looked back....

She felt that Cordt was stronger than she and hated him for it. She sought for a weapon to defend herself. She wished that Finn, who loved her, would lie down before her, as he so often used to do, with his cheek against her hand. And she knew that he was not thinking of it.

She felt so wretched and so lonely that she grew frightened and called upon her old longing for the red happiness ... if only it would come and take her, so that she might have something to set against him who had everything....

“Sing to me, mother,” said Finn.“Yes,” she said.

She crossed the room with a stronger step than usual. Her cheek was red and her eyes glowed. She took hold of the instrument with firm hands when she opened it. Finn noticed this and looked at her in surprise; but it was not light enough for him to make out her face.

Fru Adelheid remained sitting with bowed head.

The song had broken her pride. She trembled over all her body and great tears fell upon her hands. She had conjured up spirits which she could not lay; she felt more powerless and small than she had ever felt before.

She began to think of Finn and looked round in alarm. But he could not see her and she wept silently. She laid her forehead against the spinet ... then her hand fell upon the keyboard and she started and rose from her seat.

“That was a strange song,” said Finn.It was so still in the room that she could not bear it.

“I have not sung it for many years,” she said. “In the old days, I used to sing it often.”

“What was father like when you met him?” asked Finn.

She stood with her back to him and turned the pages of the music with trembling hands.

“Was he as handsome as now?”

“Yes ... no.... I don’t know if he was handsome.”

Finn listened.

“He was ... he was charming.”

“That he was ... that he was,” he said and clapped his hands like a child who is delighted with a story. “And then he was so masterful ... was he not?... So that one was bound to follow him?”

“Yes,” said Fru Adelheid.“Father was a king,” said Finn.

Her heart throbbed, she listened with all her senses. She felt that Finn was somewhere close to her and accomplishing something that would destroy her. And she could not turn round, could not go to him and beg him to desist.

“I could wish I had a brother,” said Finn.

“Do you feel lonely?”

“No ... no, it is not that. But then he should have the kingdom.”

At that time, Finn made a friend whom he had not chosen or wanted for himself, but whom Cordt gave him in his anxiety, because he thought he could never get any one better.

His name was Hans and they had known each other since they were children. He was a year older than Finn, not quite so tall, but more powerfully developed, with bright hair and eyes and disposition.

His father was a little man who sat among the people in the counting-house, where his father had sat before him. He and his little wife had no luck in life save their son. But at times they trembled for his future, because his ideas were so pronounced and took so wide a range.For, even as he was taller than his father, so he would not be content with his measure in anything.

Above all, he did not want to sit in the office, but to go out in the world, big as it was. And, from the time when he was a little boy, he believed that it was bigger than they told him.

Now that he had grown up and become conscious of his need and his powers and could not get anywhere, he went fearlessly to the master of the house and told him how the matter stood.

Cordt liked him and wanted to keep him for his house, but soon saw that he had nothing that could tempt him. He asked him what he would like to be; and it appeared that Hans wanted to be an engineer.

Cordt looked at him and thought that his glance could blast rocks.

Then he promised his assistance and remained sitting in deep thought, while Hans went down the stairs singing.

Time passed. He advanced along his road and both he and the others could see that he was fully keeping pace with his dreams. Cordt did not lose sight of him and was pleased when he called. But Fru Adelheid did not like him, because he talked so loud and had such a heavy tread.

One evening, Cordt stood in Hans’ room and talked to him as he had never talked to any one:

“I am your father’s employer,” he said, “and my father was your grandfather’s. My son will never be yours. For you mean to make your own way and be your own master. You would have done that even if no one had lent you a helping hand. That is true. But then you would have become bitter, perhaps, and distrustful and narrow-minded in the use of your strength. From this I delivered you. To-day, I come to ask for a return.”

Hans had taken the hand which he put out to him and stood ill at ease, without understanding. And Cordt sat down wearily and sat long without speaking further.

At last, he woke from his thoughts and looked at the young man, who could not interpret his glance, but was moved by it:

“I do not wish that you were my son,” he said. “I have a son and he is a good lad and I love him. He has not your strength of character, but then he does not need it. His path was smoothed and shaded from the day when he was born and grew up. But he can give you many things which you have not.”

He listened to his own words, to the way in which they kept on shaping themselves into an apology for Finn, a prayer for forbearance towards him. He suffered at this; and Hans, who saw his distress, felt, without understanding, that something important and tragic was taking place in this great house, where he and his had earned their living.

“Will you try if you can be his friend?”

Hans was quite willing.

Cordt looked at him and gauged his strength. He looked round in the little low-ceilinged room which contained nothing but what served Hans in his work. He looked out of the window, where the roofs intersected one another, dirty and grey against the sky: smoke rose from hundreds of chimneys, the noise of the courtyard and the street filled the room, the window was broken and pasted up with paper.

Then he again turned his eyes to the man who sat amidst these mean surroundings and grew up strong. And Cordt knew that he was not standing here as his benefactor and his father’s employer, who was opening his rich house to him. He stood here as one who could beg and nothing more.

“You know you used to play together as children,” he said.

And, when he had said that, he was overcome with emotion, because he remembered that Finn had never played. Hans thought the same thing, but could not find the words that should be spoken on this occasion and the silence became heavy and painful to both of them.

To say something at all costs, Hans asked if Finn was ill.

Then Cordt understood that Hans must long since have pronounced his judgment on the pale, silent heir of the house and that the judgment could not be good.

He rose, tired of seeking for guarded phrases. He laid his hands on Hans’ shoulders and looked at him in such a way that Hans never forgot it:

“Do you be David,” he said. “Come to us with your harp. And come of your own accord and come when we send for you.”

The first thing was that Finn had his former room arranged so that he and Hans could be there when Hans came to see him.

There was nothing said about it. For it was taken as a matter of course that no stranger should set foot in the old room. But Cordt at once thought that his hope in Hans was shattered.

Sometimes Finn was glad when Hans was there.

They could never talk together.

Hans’ thoughts were constantly at work on plans and difficulties, the least of which seemed quite unsurmountable to Finn, and he had not the remotest idea as to what passed in his friend’s brain. He talked to all men alike and his words were all questions or answers or opinions.

So it was Hans who spoke and, wholly taken up with himself as he was, he seldom noticed that Finn fell a-dreaming.

When Finn could get him to set to work on some calculation or other, he himself sat delighted and watched Hans while he struggled with figures and drawings.

He was amused at Hans’ wrinkled forehead, his eager, impatient movements. And he waited expectantly, like one sitting on a race-ground, or wherever else men are engaged in contest, for the shout with which the engineer would fling aside the pencil when the problem was solved.

Then Finn’s face beamed with delight. He was as pleased as if it had been himself that had gained the triumph and he had no notion what sort of triumph it was or what it was worth.But sometimes, and more and more frequently, Hans was too active, too restless for him.

There were days on which Finn hid when his friend called. Often, Hans’ mere presence in the room occasioned him real bodily pain. He could feel half unconscious under his powerful glance, his voice, which was so loud and jolly, his words, which all meant something.

Then he sat tortured and wretched, because it was not possible for him to ask the other to go. And it was only seldom that Hans perceived this. When it did happen, there was no end to his awkward distress; and then Finn was not content before he had succeeded in persuading him that he was quite wrong.

Then Finn submitted, in the same way in which a hopeless invalid submits to a new cure which prepares new sufferings for him and in which he does not himself believe. And, while he suffered, he thought incessantly of his father, who suffered more than he did and whom he could not help.

His best time was when they were out together.

They drove and rode; and then they were never agreed, for Finn wanted to ride slowly and drive fast and Hans wanted just the opposite. They were always eager to accommodate themselves to each other, but this came to pass only when it was Finn’s wish that prevailed.

Finn did not like going out. But, once he had started, he was glad; and then he always wanted to have Hans with him. He was shy in a crowd and his friend’s presence reassured him.

They generally walked in the streets, for Finn felt cold if he went outside the town. Then he took Hans’ arm and kept step with him and was proud of him. He liked to hear his strong voice through the noise of the street, his quick step, the tap of his stick on the pavement.

Then Finn would sometimes begin to talk.

Mostly of his travels. And he could speak of these almost as he thought and as he spoke to his mother. It was as though the life and the noise that half drowned his words made him feel freer and safer.

And, although Hans cared but little for what Finn had seen and talked about, still there was a color and a gleam about his words that captivated him.

But, when it happened that the noise in the street was suddenly stilled, then Finn was silent and frightened. And, if, for a moment, they were separated in the crowd and Hans failed to catch a sentence and asked him to repeat it, or seized upon some phrase and asked for a further explanation and confirmation, then Finn was forthwith tired and his mood changed.

He often stopped when a piece of street-life caught his attention. He pointed it out to his friend and made it the subject of his talk. Then Hans would underline his words with some racy observation or other, which amused Finn, but afterwards annoyed him, because it spoilt the picture for him.

They never talked about women.

Finn was silent, because his thoughts were vague and modest. And Hans’ experiences were not of such a nature that he cared to talk about them. Then, also, they both had an instinctive feeling that they had less in common on this subject than on any other and that they did not wish ever to cross each other’s path.

On one occasion only was Finn his friend’s guest in his home.It was a regular feast in the little rooms, high up under the roof, and Finn was glad to be there.

He looked in delight at the two little old people who stood and sat with folded hands and little bows and nods and did not know how to show their respect and gratitude to the young master of the house. They took it for granted, as a settled thing, that Finn must be vexed because Hans had broken with tradition and gone his own way and they made endless covert excuses for it.

And through the excuses rang their pride in the strong son whom they handled as cautiously as though he would fall to pieces if they took firm hold of him ... their joyous dread of the greatness that awaited him.

Finn understood them and was touched by them. He sang his friend’s praises and prophesied a preposterous success for him and was happy to read the gladness in the little parents’ eyes.

And, while he was deep in conversation with them and amused at Hans, who was utterly confused that his friend should see the adoration of which he was the object, the picture of his own parents suddenly rose before his thoughts like great black silhouettes against the light background.

He stopped talking and then they all became silent and it was not pleasant in the room.

Afterwards, he stood with Hans and looked through the open window.

His eyes roamed over the hundreds of roofs. The sun shone on the slates and the red tiles and lit up the telephone-wires. Little garret-windows stuck out on every side ... with chintz curtains, with wall-flowers and geraniums and pelargoniums and yellow birds in white cages.In one place there hung an elegantly-painted wooden box with ferns, which were quite brown, but stood proud and stiff, and a little fir-tree in the middle. In another, the curtain fluttered right out into the air and waved and flapped like a flag. Here, two sparrows hopped about in the gutter ... there, a caged bird was singing, shrilly and sweetly.

“How charming this is!” he said.

Hans did not exactly think so.

But, at that moment, Finn set eyes on a window a little to one side and so near that he felt as if he could reach across to it.

The window was open. There were flowers in it and there was a bird which hopped from perch to perch in its cage, silently and unceasingly. Behind the flowers sat a young girl sewing. He could see the back of her and a bit of her chin and hear the stitching of the sewing-machine:“Look,” he said, in an undertone.

Hans came up and at once looked away again:

“That’s Marie,” he said. “She’s a seamstress.”

There was nothing wrong either in the words or in the tone in which they were uttered. But he said it so loud and so carelessly that it hurt Finn. The girl opposite looked up and smiled.

Then something like a cloud passed over the whole picture, with the flowers and the bird and the sunny roofs. Finn sighed and came away from the window.

And, when they sat together at supper and had finished eating, suddenly there fell upon him an insuppressible melancholy.

He looked from one to the other and read in their faces that they were subduing their gladness on his account. He imagined what it was like when the three were alone, busy and cheerful in their work and in their faith in one another.

And behind their kind words and smiles he felt the pity for their quiet guest. But he thought of this only as pity for Cordt and of himself as one who suffered blame.

Then he hurriedly took his leave.

Hans and Finn were driving in the woods, when a little stray dog ran under the wheel and was badly hurt.

They both jumped out of the carriage. Hans knelt on the ground and took the gasping dog in his arms:

“Give me your pocket-handkerchief,” he said.

Not receiving it at once, he looked up, impatiently.

Finn did not stir.

He stood leaning over the dog and looking into its glazed eyes with a great, deep, strange glance. He was not thinking whether it was an animal or a human being, whether it could be saved or whether he himself could do anything....“Finn!”

He did not stir. He was staring into the great face of death. The door of the dark house was flung open and he stared and stared into the darkness. His soul was filled with a devout awe. He felt nothing, saw nothing, but life expiring before his eyes.

Hans looked at him speechlessly, terrified at the expression in his face, which he did not know how to interpret, and grew more and more agitated.

“Give me your pocket-handkerchief, Finn.”

Finn started. He looked up and handed him the handkerchief:

“I didn’t think of it,” he said.

Hans did not reply. In a little while, the dog was dead and he flung it in among the trees in such a way that Finn could have struck him.

They got into the carriage and drove on in silence. Finn thought of nothing but what he had seen and did not suspect his friend’s agitation. Then, suddenly, he told the coachman to pull up:

“You mustn’t mind, Hans,” he said. “I am going to get out.... I can go home by myself.... I want to be alone for a little.”

Hans jumped out of the carriage and walked away without saying good-bye. Finn took no notice. He let the coachman shut the door, shrank into a corner and drove home.

Fru Adelheid came to him in the old room and could not make him speak of what lay on his mind. She smiled to him and took his hand and sang for him.

But Finn sat silent and absent.

Some time after, the friends were walking, one evening, through the streets and along the canal, where the boats lay in a row and, on the other side, an old castle stood, with broken windows and charming green roofs.

“Let us sit here for a bit,” said Finn.

They sat on the quay. The water flowed black and angry beneath them. The boats rocked and bumped and swayed. Hans drummed with his cane against the embankment-wall:

“Is it like this in Venice?” he asked.

“No,” said Finn. “It’s finer there. Because one’s strange to it.”

Hans laughed gaily and Finn said nothing more and looked down into the water.

Then they suddenly heard a shout.

They both sprang up and ran and, when they had come some distance, they saw a child on the point of drowning:

“Here, Finn ... help me....”Hans scrambled down into one of the boats and was fumbling with the oars. But Finn ran on and jumped into the water, where the child was, without a moment’s reflection.

He could not swim and Hans had first to save him. Then, with the greatest difficulty, he rescued the child. They went home to Cordt’s house and, when the first fright was over and it became clear that Finn had suffered no harm, they all sat in the living-room and talked about it.

Fru Adelheid held Finn’s hand between her own and patted it and pressed it. Cordt walked up and down in great emotion.

“How could you take it into your head?” said Hans. “You know you can’t swim.”

“I never gave it a thought,” said Finn, quietly.Cordt stopped in front of his son and nodded to him. Fru Adelheid kissed him on the forehead and her eyes beamed.

Hans looked at them, crimson with anger.

He thought of how Finn might have been drowned, or the child, or both of them. Then he remembered the scene in the woods, with the dying dog. He could not understand these people’s train of thought and he despised it. He looked at none of them and, with an effort, forced his voice to be calm, as he said:

“One has no right to behave like that. It is stupid.”

“Yes,” said Finn.

But Cordt put his hand on the engineer’s shoulder and looked at him in such a way that Hans suddenly remembered his own little faint-hearted father:“Yes,” said Cordt, “it is stupid that Finn shouldn’t know how to swim.”

Then it was decided that Cordt’s son should learn to swim.

Fru Adelheid sat, book in hand, without reading.

It was late. Finn had been with her and had said good-night and Cordt was not at home. It was silent in the house and silent outside.

She had a feeling as though she were alone in the world.

Fru Adelheid was not happy.

The peace which the good grey years had brought had departed from the house. She could not see her way anywhere: not with Finn, not when she was alone, least of all when Cordt was in the room.

She did not feel safe even at church. It would happen to her that she left church heavier in mind than when she entered. It also happened that she simply dared not go in, but turned back, when the organ pealed to her in the porch.

She sat and stared, with her white hands folded in her lap. She wanted to try if she could think the thing out to the end. But she had tried before, with ever-decreasing success.

First, there was the going back to the old room.

This was the beginning and she could not but think that it was the whole matter, for, in truth, she had never got over it. She could not defend herself against the memories that came crowding one upon the other. Her blood grew hot, her eyes moist, without her knowing why.

She suffered from a constant terror which she could neither explain nor shake off. Now it was Finn, whose pale face frightened her. Now it was Cordt, who was silent and ever more silent and brooded over his thoughts.

Then she was overcome as by a despairing remorse and she could not see how she had offended. Then she went in a secret dread of revenge and she knew of no one who meant her any harm.

There were days on which every step she took gave a dull and threatening echo of the old days. She felt as though she were living in a house whose walls were full of secret recesses with old documents which would upset everything that existed, if they came to light ... she felt as though she were walking over mysterious vaults that concealed the traces of mysterious crimes.

Wearily, Fru Adelheid leant her head upon her hand and let her hand fall again. She half rose in her chair and hid her face in the roses that stood on the table before her. She took up the book and put it down at once.

Then Cordt came.

He nodded to her, went to the farther side of the room and sat down with a book.

She looked at him timidly. She heard him turn the pages and wondered what book it was. She asked him. He answered, without looking up, and the silence increased twofold.

Fru Adelheid sighed and rose to go to bed:

“Good-night, Cordt.”

He closed the book and tossed it on the table. She stopped and looked at him. Then he asked:

“Has Hans been here to-day?”

She sat down in her chair again. He had got up and was pacing the room. She waited and listened to his footsteps.

Then she could bear it no longer:“Cordt!”

He stopped and looked at her.

“Cordt ... Finn will die, if Hans is always with him.”

“Yes,” he said, softly and sorrowfully. “Finn will die and you will die and I shall die. But Hans will live.”

“What are you trying to do with him, Cordt?”

“Have you forgotten what I want?”

He looked at her and his eyes hurt her.

“I wonder if your wish is also mine, Cordt,” she asked.

“No.”

He said that calmly, without anger, but also without hesitation.

Then she leapt up:

“Your wish was never mine ... never! You have been able to persuade me and frighten me and force me.... I never meant it, Cordt, never ... even when I agreed.”“Let the dead days be, Adelheid.”

“And now ... Cordt.... Now I am farther away from you ... now you understand me less than ever ... there is something in me now that is a thousand times stronger than what parted us then.”

Cordt looked at her with a tempest in his strong eyes:

“So there is in me, Adelheid.”

He stood before her, drawn up to his full height. She thought he seemed taller than usual and his face looked strangely young.

“There is Finn,” he said.

Fru Adelheid sat in her chair, because she could not stand.

“You speak as if he were your son and not mine,” she said.

She did not take her eyes from his face. She could not get rid of the thought that he looked so young. His hair had not a sign of grey, his walk was easy and erect as in the old days, his eyes glowed with the same strength and the same confidence.

She bent forward and stared and sought. Surely she must be able to find the wounds which sorrow had given him, the marks which age had brought.

Cordt did not look at her. He stood with his hands folded about his neck and with strangely distant eyes:

“You have said it, Adelheid ... it is as you say ... there is something now that is a thousand times greater than what parted us then. We mortals always think, when misfortunes come, that no more will come now ... that it must be over now. And so there is no difference between the child with its lost doll and the man with his dead love ... none except time, which comes and goes, comes and goes, puts out a light and kindles a pyre and puts out the pyre also.”He dropped his arms and stood silent for a while:

“Adelheid....”

He said no more. He looked round the room and at her, as though he were waking from his thoughts. Then he went to the window and looked across the square, where the lights were being put out.

Fru Adelheid stared with great fixed eyes at where he stood.

She had not seen him during many years ... where had she been all those years ... what had she been doing?

Then she had seen him again, distantly and dimly at first, like the memory of a fight, a pain, on the day when she stood once more in the old room. He had come closer ... the time he warned her about Finn. And, little by little, he had approached her through Finn ... through his fears and his love, through his every word, constantly closer and more effectively.

She clutched the arms of the chair so firmly that her knuckles turned white.

Now it had come ... now the doors of the mysterious cellars grated on their rusty hinges and the crime stood revealed ... now the secret recesses in the walls were opened and the old documents bore witness to the right....

Now there was no longer anything between her and him and there was nothing outside him and her. He stood beside her ... she could reach him with her hands. She had no son and no God. His words swept over her like a storm, his eyes were bent upon her....

She wanted to get up and run away, but could not. A sort of dizziness came over her and the ground retreated under her feet.

There were voices which told her that it was surely a very old and forgotten story ... a legend preserved in the archives of the house for the entertainment and instruction of future times, which would possibly judge differently from the one who had set the legend down.

There were others, mocking and exultant voices, which whispered to her that it was all imagination and nothing else ... that Finn belonged to her and not to him, that all his confidence and all his strength would break like glass against that pale, quiet boy, who loved his mother.

There were hymns and psalms and organ-pealing and impressive words about sin and forgiveness and Christ’s heavenly glory. The cool air of the church-vault passed over her burning forehead ... all the bells rang, as though for a soul in need.

She heard it all and it vanished like a sound in the air.And all the voices were merged before her confused thoughts.

It turned into an evening in the old days ... an evening of lights and gayety. She saw the people of that time ... she heard her own voice....

Then, suddenly, it was quenched in the great silence of the old room.

The candles were burning on the mantelpiece.... She sat and stared into the red hearth. Now Cordt spoke ... Cordt in the old days:

“I will stake life and happiness to win you. I will talk to you and importune you and conquer you. I will take you in my arms and close my door to you and run after you and forgive you. And, if I do not win you, I shall cast you off.”

She sprang up and clasped her head in her two hands:

“Cordt ... Cordt....”He turned round and looked into her white face.

She raised her face to him and sought and stared after her portrait in his eyes ... only a thought from the old days ... a memory....

It was not there. For him there was nothing in the world except that which was his happiness and his fear and his struggle ... now as in the old days....

And it was no longer she.

“Adelheid ... are you ill?”

“No ... no....”

She laughed aloud. Cordt took her hands and led her to a chair. She let him do as he would and continued to look up in his face.

Then she suddenly thrust him from her.

She smiled and shook her head at her folly. She rose and walked round the room. She said she was quite well, told him to go away ... just to go away.And Cordt went.

She stared at the door, which closed after him, as though she had seen him for the last time. Then she turned round and looked into a mirror which showed her whole figure.

Slowly she walked up to the mirror, sat down before it, with her head in her hands, and stared into her own face.

The clock struck one and two from the church-steeples and she did not hear. Then some one shouted down in the square. She rose, took a candle and left the room.

She went through the long passages and up the stairs, softly and carefully, as if she were a thief. She listened at Cordt’s door and at Finn’s. Then she stood outside the old room. She listened ... there was no sound. She opened the door ajar and saw that it was dark.

She went in quickly and walked straight up to the secret recess in the wall. She opened it and took the yellow document in her trembling hands.

Then she stared at Cordt’s name and her own, which were written down last and struck out again.

Finn stood at the window in Cordt’s room, with his head leaning against the frame, and looked down into the yard, where the porter’s children were playing.

He had come, as usual, to say good-morning and Cordt had told him to wait while he finished a letter. The letter had been sealed for some time, but Finn had not noticed it. He was watching the game down below and bending forward to see better.

Then the children were called in. He laid his head against the window-frame again and looked up at the grey sky. He thought of Hans, who had left for Paris that morning and was to remain abroad for two years.Cordt sat silent. From where he was, he could see Finn’s profile: the forehead, which was so white, the eyelids, which lifted themselves so heavily, the mouth, which was so tired and so weak.

“Finn!”

Finn started and turned round.

“Did you see Hans off?”

“Yes.”

Finn sat down by the window where he stood, with bent head and his hands upon his knees. He wound the cord of the blind round his fingers and unwound it again.

“I wonder if you will miss Hans?”

“Oh ... yes.”

“I shall,” said Cordt. “Hans represents the new order at its finest ... the hero in modern poetry ... the engineer, you know, whom they can never put on the stage without making him insipid ... because he never acts a part. He is strong and has the courage to employ his powers. To us he often seems lacking in refinement and he finds it difficult to grant us our due. He has no ancestors ... he is the ancestor ... he founds a dynasty.”

“Yes,” said Finn.

They sat silent for a while.

There was no doubt in Cordt. He knew what he wanted and wanted it. He did not seek for kind words, but strong words. Finn knew this too. He sat like a culprit awaiting sentence and was thankful for every minute that passed.

Then they looked up into each other’s eyes.

They measured each other’s strength. And Finn was strong in his hopelessness, even as Cordt was strong in the hope which he could not let go, because he had nothing else to fall back upon.

“Do you know that you are a born artist, Finn?”Finn smiled sadly and shook his head.

“You are,” said Cordt. “There is no doubt about it. When you were travelling abroad ... there was simply nothing in your letters but delight at the pictures you saw. Your journey was one long progress through a royal gallery. At sea, in the street, on the mountains ... everywhere you caught life and hung it on your wall and sat down to look at it.”

“Did I?”

“Had you not been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you would have been lost beyond redeeming. You would have become a painter ... no ... an author.”

“Would that be so bad?”

“What use is literature to us modern people?” said Cordt. “Where does it lead us? How does it form our lives? If the old poets had lived nowadays, they would certainly have been merchants, or electricians, or arctic navigators.... Just look round you, Finn ... the books we read, the pictures we look at, the plays they perform: isn’t it all like an orchestra that plays for an hour while people walk about the grounds? Tired people, who like to hear a bit of music before they go to bed. The band plays its tune and gets its pay and its applause and we are interested in seeing that the performance is well and properly given.... But ... the poet, Finn.... A solitary horn sounds over the hills. We drop the plough and listen and look up, because the notes seem to us so rare and so powerful and we have never heard them before and know them so well. Then our eyes glisten. And the sorrow that bent our back and the gladness that held us erect and the hope we had ... all of that suddenly acquires color and light. And we go whither the horn calls us ... over the hills ... to new green fields where it is better living.”“Father....”

Finn raised his head, but then could not find the phrase for what he wanted to say.

“Don’t you think that the poet must be a man ... a man like the others, with courage in his breast and a sword at his thigh? Then he goes forth and sings them to battle and wedding, to dance and death. He is a part of the business, foremost in the crowd.”

“The poets also sat in the ladies’ chambers and sang,” said Finn.

Cordt nodded:

“They did that also,” he said. “But the poets we now have do nothing else. There will always be fiddlers as long as there are idle women and women with two husbands and wars and kings. As long as the stars wander so far through the sky and the children cannot catch the bird that flies in the bush.... But never mind that, Finn. Never mind that. Just look at those who sit in the orchestra to-day.... Would you sit among them? They are sick people singing about their sickness. One is sick with love and one with lewdness and one with drink. One chants his faith on vellum, another sells his doubts in sixpenny editions. The feeble will of the one quavers in silly verses ... the other intoxicates his pale fancy with blood and horrors drawn from the olden times. Do you think that a free man would of his own accord select his place among those artists?”

Finn looked up with his quiet eyes:

“Who is a free man, father?... Are you?”

Cordt put his hands on Finn’s shoulders and bent over him and looked at him:

“You are, Finn.... You are a free man ... if you wish to be.”

“Father....”Finn put out his hands like a child asking for something. But Cordt looked at him inexorably. And so strong and radiant was his glance, that Finn tried to escape it, but could not; tried to speak, but was silent.

Then Cordt walked across the room, up and down, with great, calm strides, and spoke and was silent and never for a moment released his son from his stern grasp.

His words seized Finn and lifted him up where things were great and beautiful and bitterly cold, he thought; then let him fall again, till he relapsed into his own dark corner; and seized him anew and carried him aloft.

But, when Cordt ceased, it was to Finn as though he heard a flourish of trumpets from the clouds proclaiming that other words were now coming, greater still and austerer, more loving, ever heavier to bear.

“You are right, Finn.... I am not a free man, I never was. I am bound up in the tradition that built my house and bore my race and, when I could not support the tradition, things broke for me. But that did not make me free.... Those were heavy days, Finn. I could not understand it, you see, and I fought to the end. I was young and strong and I was in love. You are fond of the old room ... you can hear the legends up there singing their powerful, melancholy song.... Remember, Finn, I am one of those on whom the legend is laid. I have lived in the secrecy of the old room.... I have stood, in my calm, proud right ... up there, where the room stood, unseen by any one except the master of the house and his wife ... always remote and locked and hidden in its time-honored might ... always open to him who owned it.... I left it like a beaten man. But I could not retire into a corner and mourn, for I had you, Finn. You were only a little child then, so I could not know how your paths would go. I knew only one thing, that you would never sit with your wife up there, where people became so small when they sat down in the big chairs and where it was so pleasant and so safe. I was the last. With me, the tradition of the old room was finished.... Then I had to try if I could find my way in the world which I did not understand. I had to go through all that which I disliked so desperately and which had killed my happiness. For myself, I had nothing to gain: I was a bound man and a wounded. But I had you, Finn.... And I had to know if they were building properly and honestly somewhere behind all the dancing and flirting and singing which I saw before my eyes. Or if it was no different from what my eyes saw and if I should not be doing best to carry my child out into the mountains and let the wild beasts tear it to pieces.... I was alone in this. Your mother went to live in an old house beside the old house where her happiness could not grow. There she found peace. But I needed no refuge. Where I was, I was at home: I only wanted to see the place where you and your children should flourish.... I did not spare myself, Finn. I sought honestly, south and north, east and west. I took their books ... the light ones burst like soap-bubbles in my hands and the powerful ones my thoughts had to struggle to understand. Not one of their green visions but has been with me in my room, not one of their bright swords but has flashed before my eyes.... I did not allow myself to be blinded by my own bitterness, or tricked by catch-words, or frightened by abuse. I went on as long as I could see the way ... and longer, Finn. I peered out into the farthest, where those who thought as I did saw nothing but horror and insanity.... And Finn ... I don’t know.... Perhaps it was your mother’s God that helped me ... perhaps it was my ancestor, who himself had sailed into harbor and raised our house on new ground for many a good, long day. Perhaps it was your little hand, which lay so trustingly in mine, when you used to come to me in those anxious, lonely days and say good-morning and good-night.... I don’t know. I daresay it was my love for you that lifted me above myself. I climbed as high up the mountains as a mortal can climb. It all lay under my feet like a cloud ... longing and happiness and daily bread and daily trouble. I could not see the valley in which my house was built. But out of the cloud, over the mountain, I saw the road where we hustle and strive, generation after generation, ever forward towards the goal which we cannot see, but which is there, because the road is there.... And I saw land ... the promised land of you and your children ... from the mountain where I stood. A land I did not know ... a land strange to my eyes ... people with other habits and other beliefs, with a different form of love and a different code of honor.... I saw it through the storm that flung the door of the old room wide open.... That was a strange time, Finn ... the strongest in my life and the happiest.”

Cordt stood at the window with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at his son and smiled sadly. Finn sat still, with his head thrown back in his chair and his eyes closed.

“Then I equipped you for the journey, Finn.... I did not show you this way or that, for I was a bound man and could not go with you. I gave you books and masters, who opened all the gates of the world to you. I let you look into the mist where you wanted to ride. I feared nothing, because I wanted nothing for myself and because I had seen through the mist.... You grew up and I saw that you grew good and clever. Then I sat down and waited and longed for the day when I should wave to you from the balcony of my old house, when you marched forth to conquer your new land.... I was right to wait for the day.... Ah.... I have seen them, the poor devils, hungry and wounded, rush blindfold towards the new, which they did not know, because it could not possibly be worse than the old. I have heard them call for new laws because they had violated the old ... they were driven from their huts and sat on the deck of the emigrant-ship with their bundle and their uncertain hope for a better fate in the new world.... But you.... You had done no wrong and had nothing to revenge. Free as a king’s son, you rode over the bridge with your retinue and rode through the world and planted your banner wherever you chose to dwell. Born of your mother’s longing for excitement ... in your father’s house, whose walls are as thick as the walls of a castle ... with the strong air of the old room in your lungs and without its yoke upon your neck ... a rich and spotless nobleman, taking his place of his own free will in the ranks of the revolution.”

He was silent. His steps sounded heavily through the stillness:

“Are you with me, Finn?”

“Yes, father.”

“Come.”

Finn rose. Cordt put his arm over his shoulder and they paced the room together.“I had so many dreams, Finn. And I gained such confidence, because my own happiness was shattered and I had you. I had become an old man, but my mind was not blunted. I had suffered shipwreck, but I was not afraid of the sea. I believed in life ... in God, if you like.”

They did not walk well together and Cordt removed his arm. Finn sat down in his chair again and listened. Cordt went on walking:

“Then came the days which you know ... the days of the present.... You grew up into the quiet man you are. Your eyes looked heavily upon life, you shrank back timidly when you saw that there was fire and smoke on earth.... You kept your scutcheon untarnished, but that is easily done, when one doesn’t fight. You were never in places where one does not wish to be seen ... that is true. But you never went outside your door, Finn ... never. There was no fire in your blood, no desire in your thoughts. You were tired, Finn ... merely tired.... I grew frightened for you.... As the years passed, you had become more to me than a son. You were not only flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone ... you were a link in the human chain that goes on through the ages, ever onward. Your hand was in mine, but your life was more precious than mine. For you had to carry a greater burden and to carry it into new ways.... Remember, Finn, I had been on the mountain and seen through the mist. It was more than the question of an inheritance, more than family pride and family loyalty. You and I were allied in a great cause. And I sat with the map before me and followed the course of the battle ... like an old soldier, who can no longer sally forth himself, but who has his son and his colors and his emperor under fire.... Remember how I had arrived at where I was. Remember what I had lost, what I had let go, how completely I had sacrificed myself for you. I had you, Finn ... had I anything else?... When I, then, became frightened for you, I plunged into my wonderful treasure and endowed you lavishly. I told you the legend of the old house and thought it would call you to arms, like the blast of the bugle over the camp. I revealed your father’s and your mother’s fate to you, that you might see how people fight for happiness. I sent you out into the world, where life is bigger and stronger than at home, so that life might make you into a man.... But never ... never did I put any constraint upon you. Never did I usurp the place of Providence.... And you turned over the pages of the picture-book and came home paler than before and wearier. The old room was merely a charming poem to you, that sang you into deeper dreams. Up there ... where the strong men of our race met their wives, when the sun went down upon the business of the day, and talked gladly and earnestly when their hearts impelled them to ... there you sit, alone, all day long, with your slack hands.”

Then he laid his hands firmly on Finn’s shoulders. And Finn looked up with moist eyes and quivering mouth.

“To-day, Finn, I have given you your inheritance. From to-day, I look upon you as of age. You were such that one could not use coercion with you ... and, in fact, there was none that wanted to use it. Nor could one be angry with you ... you were the same ... it was the same ... always. To-day, that is past. Go out and buy yourself a house and take a wife and have children by her. And remember that, if there were some in the family that fell, there was none that flinched.”

“Father.... I understand you ... but I cannot do what you want.”

Cordt took a step back and tossed his thick hair from his forehead:

“You pale people understand everything, because no faith blinds your eyes: you are so kind and clever, you think. You judge leniently, you do not judge at all, you know that the truth is nowhere and everywhere. You justify every silly thought you have entertained ... you sit for all time and contemplate your navel ... and then you let the murderer go and the thief escape. God help you poor wretches! The stupidest, the most ignorant dervish is cleverer and kinder than you!”

Finn wanted to say something, but Cordt made a preventive gesture with his hand:

“A man must not understand everything. He must choose and judge and reject. If he doesn’t do that, there is no happiness in the world and no loyalty and no peace. And, if he cannot hate, he cannot love either.”

He went to the window and looked out. And, as he stood there, Finn came up to him and seized his hand and looked at him pleadingly:

“I can’t do what you want,” he said.

But Cordt withdrew his hand and moved away from him:

“You have no right to say that to me, Finn. I won’t listen to it. For what I want is only that you should live. Take the inheritance which I have given you and use it as you can. One day, you shall be called upon to answer for your son, as I to-day for you.”

Finn smiled sadly:

“I shall never have a son,” he said, softly.Cordt did not hear what he said. He was struggling with a memory ... passed his hand over his face and stared before him. He saw Fru Adelheid ... that evening in the old room, when she had said what Finn was saying now ... the same hopeless, impotent words: “I cannot do what you want.”

He sat down and fell back in his chair.

All the despair of the old days came over him like a tremendous weariness. He was struggling against what was stronger than himself. He had nothing to set against that eternal, hopeless, “I cannot do what you want.”

Then he sprang up and stood in front of Finn with blazing eyes:

“If it’s your mother who paralyzes your will, then fly from her, hate her, thrust her from you....”

“Father ... father....”

“Hate her, I say. She was smitten with the pestilence from her youth. She understood everything ... like you. To her nothing was small or great, nothing near or far. Her will was gone, like yours. She knew where the glory lay, if she could reach it, but she could not. She hearkened to the times and the times made her their own. She was always sick ... sick unto death.”

He crossed the room and said nothing more.

They were both of them very pale and both longed to be alone. They had nothing more to say to each other.

And Finn was not angry on his mother’s account. He thought only of the one thing, that he could not do what Cordt wanted and could not appease his sorrow ... could not even tell him that he loved him. And then he longed to sit still ... in the old room ... with his mother, who was so pretty and whom he had never offended:

“Are you angry with me, father?”

Cordt looked at him long and intently. Then he said:

“Yes.”

But, when Finn was gone, he sat with his face buried in his hands and wept.

Cordt entered, dressed to go out, and hurriedly crossed the room.

Fru Adelheid sat writing. She looked up, as he came in, and went on writing.

“Where is Finn?”

“Upstairs, I suppose ... in his room,” she answered, without looking at him.

He stood at the window for a moment. Then he flung himself into a chair and got up again and stood by the table at which she was sitting:

“Have you been with him to-day?”

“No.”

She closed her blotting-book and turned her chair so that her face was in shadow. Then she said:

“Finn is too much alone.”“Yes.”

He nodded and said yes again; then stood with his head bowed deep in thought.

“It is so quiet here,” said Fru Adelheid. “You are not happy and Finn notices it. And Hans is away....”

“Yes ... yes....”

She crossed her arms over her breast and sat silent and looked at the tip of her foot.

“Adelheid....”

Cordt drew himself erect:

“We will fill the house with gayety,” he said. “We will go and pay visits to-morrow morning ... you and Finn and I ... to old friends and new. We will have young and cheerful people here and pretty women and clever men ... lights and music.”

She looked up at him. He smiled and put his hand on her shoulder.“Yes,” she said.

Cordt talked about it a little and then went out hurriedly.

Fru Adelheid remained sitting long. The room grew dark. The lamps before the gateway were lit and their flickering gleams danced on the ceiling. The fire in the hearth smouldered under the ashes. Where she sat, no light fell; her white dress shone faintly through the gloom.

She thought of Cordt’s smile ... he had said that to her much as though he were asking one of the people in the office to take pains in a difficult matter.

She thought of Finn, who looked at her with such strange eyes, as though the relations between him and his mother had changed and he could not understand it.

She thought of herself. She felt like a tree in autumn, when the leaves fall ... a tree that had always thought itself green and beautiful until now, when it saw its glory flutter before the wind.

And, day after day and every hour of the day, she rebuilt it all as it might have been.

She built up the temple of the old room again and locked the door with seven seals. She put time back and sat with her little boy in her lap and resented old Marie’s undressing him and singing him to sleep. She put time forward and celebrated the day when Finn should lead his wife into the secret chamber of the house and tell her all about it, in all its beauty and solemnity, and write his name and hers on the yellow document.

Fru Adelheid smiled sadly.

She thought she was like the man who had put the celestial globe up there in the old room ... the man whose intellect was obscured and who sat and played with the stars until he died.But her thoughts always went the same way, while the darkness fell ever closer about Cordt’s house.

She wondered, would it be any use now, if the house were filled with lights and gayety? Or would the darkness lurk in every gloomy corner and spring forth when the feast was over and for ever hide the three who moved about the house, each his own way, anxiously and alone?

She did not know. But she always thought of it. And there was nothing tempestuous in her hope and in her fear and in her regret.

Fru Adelheid was calm now, always.

Then the stately house on the square was lit up with gayety.

The horses trampled in the gateway and the servants ran up and down the carpeted stairs. The great drawing-rooms streamed with lights and flowers and music and the floor was filled with dancers.

It was a wealth and splendor even greater than in the old days, for now the master of the house was a more lavish host than he had ever been before. He could never have things fine enough, luxurious enough. He saw to everything, was everywhere and moved among his guests so that they could see that he delighted in them.The entertainments at Cordt’s house became legendary. And all that were rich and beautiful and noble and intelligent came when he invited them and came gratefully and were glad to stay.

The men gathered close about the lady of the house, who was charming in her white gown, with her white hair.

Those who had paid her their homage in the old days raised their grey heads when she passed them and followed her tall figure with a gleam of their youthful fire in their eyes. And those who were now young wondered when they heard the old ones tell that she was once a thousand times prettier.

Or not prettier, perhaps. But such that every man on whom her eyes fell was, from that moment, hers and that every glance she vouchsafed was remembered for all time.

Now she was more remote in her smiles. Her glance was deeper, but it was as though it did not see. Her red mouth no longer promised happiness as it used to. Any one would think it a happiness to win her. But no one would believe it possible.

And, while they saw her thus in the light of their youth, they wondered what could have happened in the years that had passed and why the house had so long been closed and why it had now so suddenly opened its doors wide to the world which holds revel daily.

But their thoughts never grew to the shadow of a slander.

They asked her to sing. And, as she sat at the piano and looked through the room with her great, strange eyes, the old friends of the house remembered the glowing songs of her youth, which had set their blood aflame as she exulted and wept in them with desire and love.

But now, when she sang, the young ones listened, enraptured with her voice, which was so bright and so clear and so wonderfully still:

There was a brief silence when she ceased. Then they crowded round her in admiration and with endless requests for more.Fru Adelheid rose. She talked and smiled and thanked them. But her glance wandered far beyond all these people, who meant nothing to her, to Cordt, who stood at the far end of the room and was talking to some one and did not see her and had not heard her.

But Finn had heard her. And Finn had seen her great, humble, plaintive look.

He did not take his eyes off her and strange thoughts hurried through his head. He now understood what had happened in this house. He knew why Fru Adelheid had come to him so seldom, lately, in the old room. Why she had sat so silent, steeped in distant thoughts ... why her glance had been so uncertain and so timid, her words so wavering, her hand so slack in his.

And he felt that the last bond was broken that bound him to mankind.

He had lost his mother, now that he was pushing hardest towards her. When she came to him now, it was Cordt she looked for. Were he to go to her now and lie down before her with his cheek on her hand, as he had so often done, she would lift him up and bid him go out into the world and live.

He had a feeling as though he had been betrayed, but, at the same time, he wept with her in his heart. He looked at his father and thought how much more of a man he was than she suspected in her poor, tardy repentance. He looked at his mother and felt a curious loving contempt for her ... such as men feel for a woman who comes to them and begs for something a thousand times less important than what she once possessed and despised.

Then he had to go into the crowd of people, who offered him their smiles and asked for his.And so strong was the feeling of loneliness in him that he mingled readily with the guests of the house and was more cheerful than usual and more talkative.

He was as pleased to move about these bright rooms as elsewhere, because he was no longer at home anywhere. He might just as well exchange a few words with these smartly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, since he had to talk and since he could no longer tell any one what was passing within him and since no one could tell him what he wanted to hear.

The women crowded round him as the men did round Fru Adelheid. They wound a circle of white arms and bright eyes round the young heir of the house, who was so pale and so handsome and such that women longed for that which he did not show. They met him with charming, flattering words and smiled upon him and he did not hear the words and broke through the circle without a trouble and without a sigh.

The men offered him their friendship and he shook their hands and talked to them and went away and forgot their faces. Cordt found him in every corner, where he had hidden for a moment without intending to or thinking about it, and carried him smilingly and teasingly and jestingly into the throng. And he smiled to his father and went with him and remained always alone.

He saw himself and only himself. He seized upon every thought that arose in him and discussed it as if it had been thought by another. He contemplated every mood that welled up in his soul as if he had read it in a book.

He climbed high up the peaks upon which men cannot live ... the peaks whence they topple down one day or where they perish in the bright frost. For there is no sound up there and no air, no day and no paths. Only light and always light.

But, when it happened that Cordt’s glance fell upon him, without his knowing it, the loneliness was suddenly extinguished in his soul.

Then he knew who he was and where he was and the pain of life gnawed into his soul. For he constantly read the eternal, hopeless, fond question in his father’s eyes. He realized what he had forgotten, that the house was making holiday for his sake and his sake alone. Every strain that sounded, every rose that blushed, every pretty woman who moved across the floor: they were all his father’s servants, who came to him with message after message that life’s banquet was served if he would but take his seat at the board and drain its golden cup.

Then he thought sadly of his tranquil, beautiful mother, who had gone from him, out into life, which did not touch him. How good it would have been if they could sit together now and talk and be silent, while the fountain rippled in the square and the queer things in the old room whispered their strange and mighty legend!

It would have been good for him. And good for her, he thought. And best of all, perhaps, for Cordt, who did not see her.

His thoughts gathered in love for Cordt, who was struggling to the death in his hopeless fight. He felt as though his father were a hero in the wars and wished that he were his meanest page to buckle on his armor for him and bathe his wounds and sit beside him with his lute, when he would sleep.

But the rout ran its course and it was late before the gate closed behind the last carriage.It fell heavily and harshly as though it were striking angrily at the guests’ heels. It grated its hinges long and shook its bolts as though it thought of never opening again, but of shutting out the world for ever from that old house, in which no light could drive away the increasing gloom, no joyous trumpets drown the hoarse voices that threatened in the corners.

Then they sat together for a while longer, they three who dwelt in the house, and talked with empty words and empty eyes.

Fru Adelheid it was who first ceased, because her thoughts were the strongest. And Finn it was who said the most ... as though to expiate the fault that oppressed him.

But it was Cordt who was bitterest in his care, while indifferent words passed between those who stood as close together as it was possible for mortals to stand and who feared the silence and who had nothing more to say to each other.

Then Cordt said good-night and Finn. But Fru Adelheid told the servants to leave her for a little and the candles burnt where the rout had been.

Restlessly she wandered about the room and again thought of the days that were gone and could never return. And she readily surrendered herself to her fancies, for there was in her now but one hope and one faith and one repentance.

She fancied that one of the long evenings was over in which gay acquaintances filled her rich house and Cordt and she exchanged glances which only they understood.

She had been to the nursery and leant over her little boy, who was sleeping with red cheeks. Now she would take the reddest flower there was and then go up the secret stair ... up to where the old room stood, in its wonderful glory.

There he sat and waited for her.

She saw him as she entered ... he raised his face to her and nodded and then lapsed again into his heavy thoughts. And she stood silent at the window, where the red flowers blushed before her feet and the square lay below her in the darkness of the night and the fountain sang its refrain, which never begins and never stops.

Then she rose and crossed the room. She heard his voice when he talked to her, as he so often talked ... ever the same judgment upon the dance that passed over the world, the same mighty song in praise of great marriage, the same passionate, loving prayer that she would only see it while there was yet time and let those dance who had nothing better to do and take the proud place which he offered her by his side ... in the old chair, in which people became so small and so strong, because they sat with their feet on an altar that was raised in faith and built up of faith and fenced in with faith throughout the changing times.

Then, when he had said that and sat by the chimney, where the fire glowed and the candles shed their rays sparingly in the corners of the old room ... she would stand for a little at the window, while all was silent in the room, and look at him, who was the man in her life and had never ceased to be so. And then she would go up to him ... slowly and quietly, because she honored the ground she trod on ... kneel down where he sat and raise to him the eyes whose beauty he had loved, whose glance he had sought in such great hope and such great fear.

Then she would tell him exactly how it was ... how strong it was and how silent:

“Cordt ... you strong, you irresistible man ... I love you as you would be loved. I thank you, because you talked to me and never grew weary. Because you always besought me. Because you waited for me and trusted that the day would come when the silence of the old room should turn to gladsome song in my soul and all the other sounds in the world like a distant buzz in the woods. Now I am here ... Cordt ... you strong, you irresistible man. Now I am yours, as I was before, and I am yours in the old room. There is nothing threatening or gloomy now in the strange things up here from the vanished days. I can sing to the old spinet so that no strings snap and no memories are mortally startled, for I sing only of you and of my boy and of my happiness. I can cherish the thread upon great-grandmother’s spinning-wheel because I have woven the cloth of happiness in my own room. I can lovingly hide the wax doll in the folds of the curtain, because I have lived to see the day when I went gladly and readily to the secret chamber of the house and sat there long and was contented.... But the jar with the naked man writhing through thorns: I set that up here when I was not yet what I am. It shall stand here in memory of the evil time that pulled at Fru Adelheid’s soul and lured her desires with sounds from the square outside.... And our little boy, who sleeps with red cheeks, shall grow to man’s estate and come up here one day, when you and I are dead, and sit with his wife in the chairs in which we sat. Then he shall know that his mother was tempted, it is true, but not destroyed.”

Fru Adelheid sat in her corner and dreamt in the silent, empty rooms.Her white gown spread over the floor about her feet. Her eyes shone.

But high up, on the balcony of the old room, stood Finn and stared into the night that stretched round about him like a waveless sea.

It was silent. He did not think, did not dream. His soul mingled with the darkness, which was not evil and not good ... only silent.

He was like a dead man who had been put on guard on the brink of the tower and who still stood there, staring with glazed eyes. The fountain rippled ... it was as though the water rose over the edge of the basin and would rise and rise until it reached the dead man up there and washed him away.

Then a man came across the square.

He walked and sang, until he set eyes upon the man who stood up there, high and dark and motionless. Then he stopped and looked at him and shouted something.

And the man on the balcony answered with a shout. And the man below was seized with fear and ran away and vanished in the darkness.

Cordt looked into the room where Fru Adelheid sat:

“Where is Finn?”

“I think he’s in the old room.”

Cordt closed the door and walked quickly down the passage. She was sitting by the window and saw him in the square below, where he stood and looked up at the house. Then he walked away, in such a manner that she could see that he had no object for his walk.

The servant came and lit the candles. Fru Adelheid sat down by the fireplace with her hands in her lap and listened for a sound in the quiet house.

Soon after, Cordt came home.

She heard his voice in the passage. Then he went into his own room ... now he was outside again. She understood that he was on his way to Finn; but the next moment he came in to where she was sitting and sat down at a distance from her:

“Have you been up to him to-day, Adelheid?”

“No.”

Cordt moved restlessly in his chair, rose to go and sat down again. Fru Adelheid struggled with herself not to go over to him and take his hand and talk to him. Then he said:

“He has been so odd, lately. Brighter than usual, but more absent, nevertheless. He is not shamming, but still he is not himself.”

Cordt went on talking about it, without looking at her and not so much in order to tell it to her as because he could not keep silent. She saw this exactly and turned away her face and cried quietly. Then he asked:

“Haven’t you noticed it?”

“I think he is much as usual.”

Cordt rose and crossed the room. He stood for a time by the chimney, where she sat, and stared into the fire. She looked up at him with bright, moist eyes. Then he went over and sat where he had been sitting before and it was silent in the room.

“I wonder, oughtn’t you to go up to him, Adelheid?”

He could not hear her reply and looked across at her. She had stood up and was coming towards him. He saw that she was very pale and that she was crying, but did not think about it and forgot it again at once.

Then she sat by him ... so close that her white gown lay over his feet. She crossed her hands in her lap and parted them again and did not look at him while she spoke:

“Cordt....” she said.

And, when she had said that, she began to tremble and pressed her hands together.

“Yes?”

“You ought to go up to him, Cordt.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he bent closer to her and lowered his voice, as though there were some one in the room who could hear what he was saying and must not:

“I dare not. I have frightened him. He starts when he sees me ... he stands outside my door and collects his courage when he comes to me to say good-morning. I will go quite away from him for a little while ... go for a journey, I think, until he becomes more tranquil.”

She looked at him and pictured him roaming round the world so that Finn might recover his tranquillity. She saw him strolling in distant towns, where life flowed on around him, alone, knowing no peace, ever thinking of his son ... longing for the day when he could come home, dreading how he would find him then.

Fru Adelheid slipped from her chair and lay on the floor before him, with her cheek against his hand and her eyes streaming with tears.

Cordt did not see. He stared into the room across her head, with the strained, racked look which he now always wore when he was alone:

“He does not like our parties, Adelheid,” he said, meditatively. “We only did him harm.”

“Yes.”

“But, if you would go up to him, Adelheid ... very quietly ... and sit with him a little, so that he could not give way to his thoughts. Or help him, so that his thoughts could find utterance. You two always got on well together, you know, and he was glad to see you whenever you came.”

“He is no longer glad to see me, Cordt.”

He looked at her in surprise and encountered her moist glance.

“If I went up now, Cordt ... I could not sit with Finn as I used to. For I am no longer the same.”

“Ah, well!” was all he said.

He spoke calmly and indifferently, as though he had had no particular faith in his remedy and must look round for something else.

“Cordt!...”

It was a scream.

He started. And, as if he had now first seen that she was kneeling before him, he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.He crossed the room and then came back and stood and looked at her with a sense of dislike that increased every minute. She crept to the chair from which he had risen and laid her head on it. She closed her eyes before his glance and wept silently and without stopping.

“You...?” he said slowly.

She received the blow which the word gave her without breathing a sound. Once she opened her eyes and immediately closed them again. Pale and still she lay before his feet.

Then his eyes blazed with anger and scorn:

“What a number of years have passed since we two first met, Fru Adelheid ... what a number of miserable years!”

“Yes,” she said and raised her head for a moment and laid it on the chair again.

“You went away ... in search of your red happiness. You were not content with your husband, whom you loved and who loved you ... you must have all men on their knees before your beauty ... you must needs see the desire in their eyes and their unchaste hands cramped because they dared not lay them upon Cordt’s wife.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, did you find the lover who bound your will to his foot? And did he spurn you when he had seen to the depths of your charming eyes? Or did you leave him of your own accord ... and go farther out into the world ... in search of that which was greater still and redder?”

“I had no lover,” she said, in a low voice.

He tossed back the hair from his forehead and clenched his fists:

“No,” he said. “You did not. That is your disgrace and your judgment.”“Cordt ... Cordt ... suppose I had had....”

“Yes ... if you had had a lover and were here to-day, then I should take your hand and lead you to our son and say to him, ‘Here is your mother, who has been unhappy. She loved your father and her love died when the man came who was more to her than he. She has not known a really happy day in all these years, because her fate was too strong for her. Now she has come to ask for your affection and needs it.’”

He crossed the room and then came and stood by her again:

“Get up, Adelheid.”

She rose from the floor and sat down in her chair again, with her white hands crossed in her lap, silently and quietly. He looked at her and it was as though her humble obedience added to his anger:

“Where did you go on the day when you broke the bonds of your marriage, because the air in the old room was too pure for you and too strong? Where have you been since?”

“I went to God.”

Cordt laughed:

“Show me your God.”

He bent over and looked her in the face:

“I don’t believe in your God,” he said.

She did not take her eyes from his and stretched out her trembling hands to him and her red mouth quivered with weeping:

“Then I don’t believe in Him either, Cordt.”

He turned away from her. Quietly she bowed her head, her tears fell upon her hands, she listened and moaned under the blows which she had received and longed for more.But Cordt sat at the window and looked out where the rain came pouring down and the flame of the lamps flickered in the wind. His anger was over. He could not remember what they had been talking of. His thoughts were where they always were and all the rest was nothing.

Then he suddenly stood by her again and struck his hand on his temples and looked at her with fear in his eyes:

“Adelheid ... do you think Finn won’t come to us at all to-night?”

She understood that it was too late ... irremediably, hopelessly too late. She would never be able to tell him what was burning in her soul. He would never know that she did not come, because she was weary and because she was afraid, but that she had honestly wiped out the bad years of her life and stood again as he would have had her the time ... the time he wanted to have her thus.“He will come and say good-night,” she said calmly.

Fru Adelheid raised her folded hands to her mouth.

Things could not remain thus for ever. But she could wait. She could go barefoot over the stones, if only once she reached a place in his house where she could stay. There must be a road somewhere that led to him.

And the evening sped on.

She sat beside him again and held his hand in hers, happy that he allowed her to keep it. She wanted to push his hair off his forehead, where the wrinkles lay so sharply marked, but did not. She wanted to put her hands on his tired eyes, but dared not.

They talked of Finn and she talked softly and soothingly to him as to a child, happy to be going the way he wanted. She found such gentle words and such impressive ones ... she found her smile again and looked at him and met his smile, which came stealing to his face like a sun-gleam and vanished again at once.

He heard but little of what she said. But the sound of her voice did him good. He heard it and the rain, which beat against the panes, and it grew warm and peaceful around him.

His fears, which had aroused and spied and driven his every thought and turned and weighed his every doubt, slumbered in this quiet hour. He sat there like an old man who has suffered so much that his faculties have been blunted to pain and who takes his solace as it comes and is thankful.

He looked at her as he used to look at his mother when he was young and unhappy. He thought of her as of a young girl who knew the old man so little and owed him nothing, but went to his chair and laid her roses in his hand, so that things might be a little pleasanter for him.

And once he moved uneasily in his chair and looked at her quite differently and said:

“Adelheid ... why have I no child but him?”

He said that very quietly and, a little after, he said it again. He said it to himself and not to her. She saw this and wept, because she knew he did not perceive it.

And the evening sped on.

They sat quietly and she was silent and talked again of their son up there in the old room. Then she said:

“Cordt, let us go up to him!”

“Both of us?”

She listened anxiously whether he would say any more ... whether he would reflect who she was and thrust her from him in anger, as he had done before.

But he sat silent and looked at the red glow in the fireplace.

Then she rose and put out her hands to him:

“Come ... Cordt ... let us go. We will sit with him a little and talk to him, quietly and cheerfully, till the shadows disappear. Then we will come down here again and they will return, when he is alone. But we will go up every day and fight with them for him and win him.”

He rose heavily and took her hand.

Fru Adelheid led him through the room like a child. They went through the long passage and up the secret stairs.... She was always a little in front of him. Her eyes shone with happiness. The bells rang out in her soul and she held Cordt’s hand so fast as though she would never let it go.

They came to the door of the old room and knocked and listened. She looked at him and bent over his hand and kissed it with streaming tears.

Then she opened the door briskly and went in with head uplifted and drew him after her.

Over by the window sat Cordt’s son, in one of the big chairs. He had shot himself.

THE END.