“How long has he been without it?”
“I came to him on Tuesday evening; it was on the Monday that he read that paragraph, just this day week, and he has never slept since then. When did my telegram reach you, by the by?”
“Not until Thursday. You see, though you sent it on Wednesday morning, yet it had to be forwarded from Bergen, as we were in an out-of-the-way place on the Dovrefield.”
“And you have been traveling ever since? You must be terribly worn out.”
“Oh, the traveling was nothing; it was the terrible anxiety and the slowness of everything that almost maddened one. But nothing matters now. I am at least in time to see him.”
“This is the house where he is lodging,” said Roy as the cab drew up. “Are you fit to go to him now, or had you not better rest first?”
“No, no, I must go to him directly,” she said. And, indeed, it seemed that the excitement had taken away all her fatigue; her cheeks were glowing, her eyes, though so wistful, were full of eagerness. She followed him into the gloomy little house, spoke a courteous word or two to Miss Charlotte, stood in the passage to receive her, and then hastily mounted the stairs, and entered the darkened room where, instead of the excitement which she had pictured to herself, there reigned an ominous calm. A hospital nurse, whose sweet, strong face contrasted curiously with her funereal garments, was sitting beside the mattresses, which for greater convenience had been placed on the floor. Frithiof lay in the absolute stillness of exhaustion, and Sigrid, who had never seen him ill, was for a moment almost overcome. That he, who had always been so strong, so daring, so full of life and spirit, should have sunk to this! It seemed hardly possible that the thin, worn, haggard face on the pillow could be the same face which had smiled on her last from the deck of the steamer when he had started on that fatal visit to the Morgans. He was talking incoherently, and twice she caught the name of Blanche.
“If she were here I could kill her!” she thought to herself; but the fierce indignation died down almost instantly, for all the tenderness of her womanly nature was called out by Frithiof’s need.
“Try if you can get him to take this,” said the nurse, handing her a cup of beef-tea.
He took it passively, but evidently did not in the least recognize her. It was only after some time had gone by that the tone of her voice and the sound of his native tongue affected him. His eyes, which for so many days had seen only the phantoms of his imagination, fixed themselves on her face, and by degrees a light of recognition dawned in them.