distressed, she silently stroked the hair back from my forehead again
and again.

There was a warmth in the little hand and an eloquence in her face as
she struggled to keep back her tears, that my heart, so hungering after
affection, could not withstand.

I do not know how it came about, but I only remember that I stood and
pressed her passionately to my heart, with my cheek against hers, and
begged her to love me, only a little, and I would love her without
measure the whole of my life. I remember, too, that she answered "Yes,"
and that we both cried.

A little while after we stood hand in hand, smiling and looking at one
another. A new thought had simultaneously come to us both--that now we
were engaged. Susanna was the first to give it expression, and said, as
she looked at me out of the depths of her faithful blue eyes, that from
this time I must always remember that she was fond of me, however unkind
the others were.

We heard them calling us, and--what we had never thought of doing
before--Susanna hurried on by herself a little way, so that we each came
back to the others alone.

* * * * *

It was far on into the morning of the next day, when Anne Kvæn roused me
with a shake, as she had been accustomed to do since I was a child, and
told me that my father had started that morning for Tromsö. He had been
up to my room before he went, and when he came down again said that I