"Oh, my dearest, Norway will always be the fairest land in the whole world to me: the land where the barrier was broken down between you and me.
"Katharine Frensham."
[CHAPTER V.]
The letter fell from Clifford's hands. He leaned over his desk, and covered his face with his hands. The tears streamed down his cheeks. Then he took the letter, pressed it to his heart, kissed it passionately, kissed the signature, read it all over again with dim eyes, pressed it to his heart again—and was made whole.
When he had recovered himself, he rang the bell, ordered the trap, caught the train to Waterloo, and ran up the stairs to Katharine's flat.
Katharine had come home rather earlier than usual from business. She had finished tea, and was standing by the window of her pretty drawing-room, watching the lights on the river. She was in one of her sad, lonely moods; she was feeling outside everything.
"Mercifully I have my work," she said to herself. "If any one had told me ten years ago that I should be thankful to go down to business every day at the same hour, I could not have believed it."
Some one had sent her Matthew Arnold's poems as a Christmas present. She took the volume now, and opened it at these words:—
"Yes, in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,