Then, when night came and the rippling of the fountain sang louder and louder through the silence and cries sounded from down below, no one knowing what they were, and solitary steps were heard, that approached and retreated again, then he lit the candles on the mantelpiece and sat down in one of the old chairs, there where the owners of the house and their wives had sat when the house slept and they had something to say to each other.
He looked round the room, where the things sang in every dark corner, and simply could not conceive that he had not known the old room before.
He was more at home here than anywhere else: here, where he was outside the world, which worried him, because it demanded that of him which he had not; here, where every spot and every object told how all had been said and done and accomplished in the old days, so that he had nothing else to do but listen wonderingly and rejoice at its marvellous beauty.
Then he fell a-dreaming and remained sitting till the lights went out.
“He does not sleep enough,” said Fru Adelheid, anxiously.
Cordt crossed the floor with the same thought in his mind. Then he stopped where she was sitting and looked at her:
“I wonder, is he ever awake, Adelheid?” he said.
By day, Finn generally sat at the window and stared out, idly and silently, with his hands open on his knees.
Often, when Cordt was crossing the square, he thought that he could see Finn’s old face behind the window-panes. He would stop and nod and beckon to him.
But Finn never saw him. For he saw nothing positively.