"Thanks, I'm much better now."
"Won't you sit down, Arne?" she added after a while, and Arne felt his way to a chair at the foot of the bed. "It did me good to hear you singing; won't you sing a little to me up here?"
"If I only knew anything you would like."
She was silent a while: then she said, "Sing a hymn." And he sang one: it was the confirmation hymn. When he had finished he heard her weeping, and so he was afraid to sing again; but in a little while she said, "Sing one more." And he sang another: it was the one which is generally sung while the catechumens are standing in the aisle.
"How many things I've thought over while I've been lying here," Eli said. He did not know what to answer; and he heard her weeping again in the dark. A clock that was ticking on the wall warned for striking, and then struck. Eli breathed deeply several times, as if she would lighten her breast, and then she said, "One knows so little; I knew neither father nor mother. I haven't been kind to them; and now it seems so sad to hear that hymn."
When we talk in the darkness, we speak more faithfully than when we see each other's face; and we also say more.
"It does one good to hear you talk so," Arne replied, just remembering what she had said when she was taken ill.
She understood what he meant. "If now this had not happened to me," she went on, "God only knows how long I might have gone before I found mother."
"She has talked matters over with you lately, then?"
"Yes, every day; she has done hardly anything else."