“He will come and say good-night,” she said calmly.
Fru Adelheid raised her folded hands to her mouth.
Things could not remain thus for ever. But she could wait. She could go barefoot over the stones, if only once she reached a place in his house where she could stay. There must be a road somewhere that led to him.
And the evening sped on.
She sat beside him again and held his hand in hers, happy that he allowed her to keep it. She wanted to push his hair off his forehead, where the wrinkles lay so sharply marked, but did not. She wanted to put her hands on his tired eyes, but dared not.
They talked of Finn and she talked softly and soothingly to him as to a child, happy to be going the way he wanted. She found such gentle words and such impressive ones ... she found her smile again and looked at him and met his smile, which came stealing to his face like a sun-gleam and vanished again at once.
He heard but little of what she said. But the sound of her voice did him good. He heard it and the rain, which beat against the panes, and it grew warm and peaceful around him.
His fears, which had aroused and spied and driven his every thought and turned and weighed his every doubt, slumbered in this quiet hour. He sat there like an old man who has suffered so much that his faculties have been blunted to pain and who takes his solace as it comes and is thankful.
He looked at her as he used to look at his mother when he was young and unhappy. He thought of her as of a young girl who knew the old man so little and owed him nothing, but went to his chair and laid her roses in his hand, so that things might be a little pleasanter for him.