"I don"t think I understand--not all of it. But have you really been so happy?"
"So unspeakably happy. Yes. And glad to feel myself strong and self-restrained. I have often thought that no one could ever dream what happiness and beauty can live in one little grey village. Do you know what I think? I believe that in every little grey village there is a quiet, secret happiness, that no one knows."
"Not everywhere, Olof. It is not everywhere there is anyone like you."
"But you! I don"t mean to say, of course, it should be just like ours.
But a happiness...."
He drew the girl to him, and their lips met in a long, gentle kiss.
"Can everyone kiss like you?" she whispered shyly, with a tender gleam in her eyes.
"Maybe. I don"t know."
"No, no--there"s no one in the world like you. None that can talk like you, or kiss like you. Do you know what I always think--always look at, when you kiss me?"
"No--tell me, tell me!" he cried eagerly.
"No--I don"t think I can."
"Something you can"t tell _me_, Daisy-flower? Come, don"t you think it"s your turn to tell me something now?"
"Well, then--only, you mustn"t laugh. I know it"s silly. I always--I always look at your neck. There"s a big vein just there, and it beats so prettily all the time. And then I feel as if your soul were flowing through it--right into me. And it does, for I can feel it!"
"That"s the loveliest thing you"ve ever said in all your life," said he solemnly. "We won"t talk any more now, only be together...."
Spring was near; it was open war between the sun and the cold. The snowdrifts had begun to disappear.
Strange dreams were at work in Olof"s mind.
"She loves me--warmly and truly," he told himself. "But is her love deep and strong enough for her to forget all else, and give herself up fully and freely to her lover?"
"And could you let her? Could you accept that sacrifice--from one like her?"
"No, no. I didn"t mean that, of course. But if only I could be sure--could feel beyond all doubt that she _would_; that she was ready to give up everything for my sake...."
"And you count _that_ the final test of love? Shame on you!"
The colour faded from the evening sky; the stars were lit ... the errant fancies died away.
In the brilliant sunlight they returned--the same strange dreams welling up on every side, like the waters of spring. Behind and before him, everywhere, insistently, an irresistible song.
"I must know--I must sound the uttermost depths of her love!"
"Can you not see how cruel it would be--cruel to her beyond all others?"
"But only to know! To ask as if only in jest...."
"In jest? And you would jest with such a thing as this!"
And the dreams sank down into the hurrying waters; yet still the warm clouds sailed across the sky.
Like a rushing flood--the old desire again.
"Can anything be cruel that is meant in love? A question only--showing in itself how deeply I love her? It is torture not to know; I must break through it--I must learn the truth!"
"..." But the other voice was lost in a rush of foaming waters.
He took the girl"s hand in his, and spoke warmly, with beautiful words.
Her fair brow darkened under a cloud--so dark seemed any cloud there that for a moment he wished he had not spoken.
"I never thought you could doubt me," she murmured, almost in tears.
"Or ask--or ask for that!"
"Oh, my love," he thought. "If you only knew! Just one word, and then I can tell you all--and we shall be doubly happy after."
So he thought, but he did not speak. And now he could think of nothing but the moment when he could tell her that it was but a question in all innocence--a trial of her love.
"It is because I love you as I do," she said, "that I could not do it.
We have been so happy--but _that_ would be something strange between us. And now that you are going away...." She stopped, and the two looked at each other sorrowfully. It was as if already something strange had crept between them, as if they had hurt each other unwittingly, and suffered at the thought.
Day by day their parting drew nearer, the sun was veiled in a dreary mist.
Then one day she came to him, strangely moved, and clung to him, slight and yielding as the drooping curtains of the birch, swayed by the wind. Clung to him, threw her arms warmly round his neck, and looked into his eyes with a new light in her own.
"What--what is it?" he asked, with emotion, hovering between fear and a strange delight.
"Olof--I am ... I can say it now...."
A tumult of joy rose up in him at her words. He clasped her to him in a fervent embrace, and opened his lips to tell her the secret at last.
But his heart beat all too violently, a hand seemed clutching his throat, and he could not utter a word, but crushed her closer to him, and pressed his lips to hers.
Drawn two ways, he seemed, and now but one; all thought of the other vanished utterly. His breast was almost bursting with a desperate regret; he could not speak, and would not even if he could.
And then, as he felt the pressure of her embrace return his own, regret was drowned in an ecstasy of surrender.
"I love you," she whispered, "as only _your mother_ ever could!"