“We will fill the house with gayety,” he said. “We will go and pay visits to-morrow morning ... you and Finn and I ... to old friends and new. We will have young and cheerful people here and pretty women and clever men ... lights and music.”
She looked up at him. He smiled and put his hand on her shoulder.
Cordt talked about it a little and then went out hurriedly.
Fru Adelheid remained sitting long. The room grew dark. The lamps before the gateway were lit and their flickering gleams danced on the ceiling. The fire in the hearth smouldered under the ashes. Where she sat, no light fell; her white dress shone faintly through the gloom.
She thought of Cordt’s smile ... he had said that to her much as though he were asking one of the people in the office to take pains in a difficult matter.
She thought of Finn, who looked at her with such strange eyes, as though the relations between him and his mother had changed and he could not understand it.
She thought of herself. She felt like a tree in autumn, when the leaves fall ... a tree that had always thought itself green and beautiful until now, when it saw its glory flutter before the wind.
And, day after day and every hour of the day, she rebuilt it all as it might have been.
She built up the temple of the old room again and locked the door with seven seals. She put time back and sat with her little boy in her lap and resented old Marie’s undressing him and singing him to sleep. She put time forward and celebrated the day when Finn should lead his wife into the secret chamber of the house and tell her all about it, in all its beauty and solemnity, and write his name and hers on the yellow document.