The sick woman turned anxiously to her sons.
"Will you take it?" she asked. "Will you take it, with all that it means…?"
Olof pressed her hand to his lips in answer. The elder brother sat motionless, as before, his eyelids trembled as if he were on the point of tears. His mother read his answer in his eyes.
"I'm glad it's over now," she said in relief. "And now I've no more to give you, but—my blessing!"
Her face lit with the same great gentleness that had softened it for years, she looked long and tenderly at her sons.
"Olof," she said at last, as if to wake him from his thoughts; "it happened at the time before you were born…."
The elder son looked at his mother in astonishment—why should she tell them what they had known all along?
But Olof looked up suddenly, as if he had heard something new and significant. The quiver in his mother's voice told him what she meant, the look in her eyes seemed to shed a light on what had been dark before.
Questioningly he looked at her, as if silently asking confirmation of his thought.
She nodded almost imperceptibly.