Christ was born for this.”
Cecil, glancing up at her when the carol was ended, read her secret in her happy, glowing face. She rose from the piano.
“A happy Christmas to you,” she said, kissing her on both cheeks.
“We have been out in the garden, right down in the lower path, and you can’t think how lovely the bells sound,” said Sigrid.
Then, with a fresh stab of pain at her heart, she thought of Frithiof’s spoiled life; she looked wistfully across at him, conscious that her love for Roy had only deepened her love for those belonging to her.
Was he never to know anything more satisfying than the peace of being freed from the heavy load of suspicion? Was he only to know the pain of love? All her first desire to keep her secret to herself died away as she looked at him, and in another minute her hand was on his arm.
“Dear old boy,” she said to him in Norse, “wont you come out into the garden with me for a few minutes?”
So they went out together into the starlight, and wandered down to the sheltered path where she and Roy had paced to and fro so long.
“What a happy Christmas it has been for us all!” she said thoughtfully.
“Very; and how little we expected it,” said Frithiof.