Perhaps she realized much more than he fancied, but she only said.
“It does not affect your own home.”
“No, that’s true,” said Frithiof. “It has made me value that more, and it has made me value your friendship more. But, you see, you are the only one at Rowan Tree House who still believes in me; and how you manage to do it passes my comprehension—when there is nothing to prove me innocent.”
“None of the things which we believe in most can be absolutely proved,” said Cecil. “I can’t logically justify my belief in you any more than in our old talks I could justify my belief in the unseen world.”
“Do you remember that first Sunday when I was staying with you, and you asked me whether I had found a Norwegian church!”
“Yes, very well. It vexed me so much to have said anything about it; but you see, I had always lived with people who went to church or chapel as regularly as they took their meals.”
“Well, do you know I was wrong; there is a Norwegian church down near the Commercial Docks at Rotherhithe.”
And then lured on by her unspoken sympathy, and favored by the darkness, he told her of the strong influence which the familiar old chorale had had upon him, and how it had carried him back to the time of his confirmation—that time which to all Norwegians is full of deep meaning and intense reality, so that even in the indifferentism of later years and the fogs of doubt which pain and trouble conjure up, its memory still lingers, ready to be touched into life at the very first opportunity.
“It is too far for Sigrid and Swanhild to go very often, but to me it is like a bit of Norway planted down in this great wilderness of houses,” he said. “It was strange that I should have happened to come across it so unexpectedly just at the time when I most needed it.”
“But that surely is what always happens,” said Cecil. “When we really need a thing we get it.”