"Tell me, my son…." Her voice was almost a whisper.
But he could not answer.
"Olof, look at me," she begged.
And the man beside the bed lifted his eyes, great dark eyes full of weariness and stark fear—but bowed his head again and looked away.
The smile vanished from the old woman's face. She gazed long and searchingly at her son's haggard chin, his sunken cheeks and loose eyelids, the pale forehead, the furrowed temples—everything.
"Perhaps it has to be," she murmured, as if speaking to someone else. "'And wasted all his substance…. And he said, I will arise and….'"
Her voice trembled, and Olof, in a hasty glance, saw how her wrinkled mouth quivered with emotion.
And suddenly the coldness that had almost paralysed him up to now, seemed to melt away. He fell on his knees beside the bed, his face in the coverlet, and knelt there sobbing.
It was as in church, at the moment when each single heart withdraws from all the rest to offer up its own silent prayer.
* * * * *