"I feel almost the same," said Eli, looking dreamily before her.
"Yet it's true," he said, laying stress on each word; "now I am no longer going about only thinking; for once I have done something."
He paused a few moments, and then laughed, but not gladly. "No, it was not I," he said; "it was mother who did it."
He seemed to have continued this thought, for after a while he said, "Up to this day I have done nothing; not taken my part in anything. I have looked on ... and listened."
He went on a little farther, and then said warmly, "God be thanked that I have got through in this way; ... now people will not have to see many things which would not have been as they ought...." Then after a while he added, "But if some one had not helped me, perhaps I should have gone on alone for ever." He was silent.
"What do you think father will say, dear?" asked Eli, who had been busy with her own thoughts.
"I am going over to Böen early to-morrow morning," said Arne;—"that, at any rate, I must do myself," he added, determining he would now be cheerful and brave, and never think of sad things again; no, never! "And, Eli, it was you who found my song in the nut-wood?" She laughed. "And the tune I had made it for, you got hold of, too."
"I took the one which suited it," she said, looking down. He smiled joyfully and bent his face down to hers.
"But the other song you did not know?"
"Which?" she asked looking up....