He pushed the hair from his forehead and looked round the room:
“There is nothing more to be said. You are a child of the time and the time claims you as its own. There was no sense in bringing you to the old room.”
“No, Cordt.”
“But you are clever and you are refined and you have seen its great, silent beauty. And, one day, you will see that happiness lay in the land where you were and you sallied forth to find it in distant climes.”
“Yes, Cordt.”
“You will see that, one day. But then it will be too late. Then the years will be gone. Then the strings of the old spinet will be rusted and mute and the spinning-wheel will have fallen to dust and the fire died out in the chimney. Then your fancy will be frightened and bewildered, like the bird that keeps on flapping against the window-pane. Your faith will be lost and your modesty turned to unchastity.”
He rose and went across to the balcony-door. Fru Adelheid lay with her cheek on the fender and with closed eyes.
A silence hung over the room greater than it had ever known before. They both of them felt it and felt it as the silence when pain is dumbed at the approach of death. They no longer fought against the inevitable, against what was stronger than themselves; and they were so tired that they no longer thought of the defeat which they had suffered, but only smiled in the peace which they had won.
And the night sped on.