“Look at these two little streams running side by side for so long and at last joining,” said Frithiof. “They are like our two lives. For so many years you have been to me as we should say fortrölig.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It is untranslatable,” he said. “It is that in which one puts one’s trust and confidence, but more besides. It means exactly what you have always been to me.”
Cecil looked down at the little bunch of forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley—the Norwegian national flowers with which Frithiof loved to keep her supplied—and the remembrance of all that she had borne during these five years came back to her, and by contrast made the happy present yet sweeter.
“I think,” she said, “I should like Signor Donati to know of our happiness; he was the first who quite understood you.”
“Yes, I must write to him,” said Frithiof. “There is no man to whom I owe more.”
And thinking of the Italian’s life and character and of his own past, he grew silent.
“Do you know,” he said at length, “there is one thing I want you to do for me. I want you to give me back my regard for the Sogne once more. I want, on our way home, just to pass Balholm again.”
And so one day it happened that they found themselves on the well-remembered fjord, and coming up on deck when dinner was over, saw that already the familiar scenes of the Frithiof saga were coming into view.
“Look! look!” said Frithiof. “There, far in front of us is the Kvinnafos, looking like a thread of white on the dark rock; and over to the right is Framnaes!”