"You are very pensive this evening, gentlemen. You treat me and Minna like men to whom you would talk politics or discuss trade, while we are but girls to whom you should tell fairy-tales while drinking tea, as is the custom in our evenings in Norway.—Come, Pastor Becker, tell me some Saga which I do not know. That of Frithiof, in which you believe, and which you promised to tell me, or the story of the peasant's son who has a ship that speaks and has a soul? I dream of the frigate Ellida. Is it not on that fairy vessel that girls should sail the seas?"
"Since we have come down to Jarvis again," said Wilfrid, whose eyes were fixed on Seraphita as those of a robber hidden in the gloom are fixed on the spot where treasure lies, "tell me why you do not marry?"
"You are all born widowers or widows," replied she. "My marriage was decided on at my birth; I am betrothed——"
"To whom?" they all asked in a breath.
"Allow me to keep my secret," said she. "I promise, if our father will grant it, to invite you to that mysterious wedding."
"Is it to be soon?"
"I am waiting."
A long silence ensued.
"The spring is come," said Seraphita. "The noise of waters and of breaking ice has begun; will you not come to hail the first springtime of the new century?"
She rose and, followed by Wilfrid, went to a window which David had thrown open. After the long stillness of winter, the vast waters were stirring beneath the ice, and sang through the fiord like music; for there are sounds which distance glorifies, and which reach the ear in waves that seem to bring refreshment and light.