But in the morning she was up betimes, and out in the early freshness and crispness. She was alone on that wild expanse. There was deep stillness all around her. Silently, softly the magic mists were caressing the mountains. The stars were losing their own brightness in the brightening skies. The sun was breaking over the distant snow-peaks of the Giant range. She was alone with Nature. And Nature set her free.
"My belovèd!" she cried. "My life was as grey as this great dreary wild until your presence glorified it. You broke in upon my loneliness—the bitterest loneliness on earth—a woman's heart-loneliness,—you broke in upon it so that now nothing of it remains—scarcely the memory. Have no fear, my belovèd. I will gather up your past life and your past love with reverential tenderness. I have no fear. My love for you and my belief in you shall conquer everything."
Clifford Thornton was mounting from the Saeter down by the lake-side. He came out joyously into the freshness and crispness of the early morning. He was alone on that wild expanse. There was deep stillness all around him. Silently, softly the magic mists were caressing the mountains. The stars were losing their own brightness in the brightening skies. The sun was breaking over the distant snow-peaks of the Giant range. He was alone with Nature. And Nature set him free.
"My love!" he cried. "I fling the past behind me at last. There are no barriers—none—none. Fool that I was to think I was not free. Free! I am as free as these vast stretches of wild country, free as this mountain air. Do you know, will you ever know, oh, you must know, my own belovèd, that I am yours—yours, unutterably yours. Shall I ever clasp you in my arms and know that you are mine?"
Then suddenly he saw Katharine in the distance, and she saw him. She was moving towards him as he was moving towards her. He hastened to meet her with a tornado of wild gladness in his heart.
But when they came face to face they stood in silence, as when they had first met on the evening of the quartette.
He was the first to find words.
"Don't let us go back," he said; "let us go on—let us go on—the morning is still young—and there is no gladness like the gladness of the early morning. What do you think?"
"No gladness like the gladness of the early morning," she repeated joyously.
So they passed on together, over the wild and stony heathland, in the direction of the Rondane mountains: he with a song in his heart, she with the same song in hers.