"But you will be there too?" Alan said anxiously. And Knutty also said:
"But you will be there too?"
"I shall be with you in spirit," Katharine said; "but, you see, my place is here, upstairs, Knutty, with that dead Englishman, lying lonely and uncared for in a strange land. I could not go away until I, as an Englishwoman, had done something on his behalf: watched by him a little, written to his people, done something to show him that our gratitude to him for not being—ours—had passed into gentle concern for him and his."
Her voice faltered for the first time that morning when she paused at the word "ours."
"So you will go back without me," she said; "but you will tell Professor Thornton why I stayed behind. He will understand."
"Ah," said Knutty, looking at her lovingly, "you English people have the true secret of nationality."
So they left her there, sadly enough; yet knowing that for the moment her place was not with them, to whom she had already been so much, but with her dead countryman upstairs. Knutty, with many tender instructions, gave her into the charge of the people of the house. Solli's last words as he drove off were:
"Take care of the English lady. Send her safely back in your best cariole."
Katharine stood watching the carriage until it was out of sight; and then a great longing and loneliness seized her. The music and words of Gerda's Swedish song suddenly came into her remembrance:
"The lover whom thou lov'st so well,