“I was one
To whom the touch of all mischance but came
As night to him that sitting on a hill
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun
Set into sunrise.”
She followed the direction of his gaze and looked, through the fir-trees on the hill upon which they were resting, down to the lovely lake which lay below them like a sheet of mother-of-pearl in the tranquil light. She looked beyond to the grand cliff-like mountains with their snowy tops touched here and there into the most exquisite rose-color by the rising sun; and then she turned back to the strong Norse face with its clearly cut features, its look of strength, and independence, and noble courage, and her heart throbbed with joy as she thought how foreign to it was that hard, bitter expression of the past. As he repeated the words “Set into sunrise” his eyes met hers fully; all the tenderness and strength of his nature and an infinite promise of future possibilities seemed to strike down into her very soul in that glance. He drew her toward him, and over both of them there stole the strange calm which is sometimes the outcome of strong feeling.
All nature seemed full of perfect peace; and with the sight of those snowy mountains and the familiar scent of the pines to tell him that he was indeed in his own country, with Cecil’s loving presence to assure him of his new possession, and with a peace in his heart which had first come to him in bitter humiliation and trouble, Frithiof, too, was at rest.
After all, what were the possible trials that lay before them? What was all earthly pain? Looked at in a true light, suffering seemed, indeed, but as this brief northern night, and death but as the herald of eternal day.
“Cecil,” said Frithiof, looking again into her sweet, grave eyes, “who would have thought that the Linnæa gathered all those years ago should prove the first link in the chain that was to bind us together forever?”