And the Rogaland girls must fare.
She willed a kingdom united
To the outermost skerrie bare,
A king for a queen, the whole of a man
For a maid—and none to share.
He stood as if rooted to the floor, until he heard Inger-Johanna say, "I will now light the lamp, and give you your lessons for to-morrow."
Immediately he was away before the window.
He saw her head in the glow of the lamp just lighted—that purity in the shape of her eyebrows and in the lines of her face—that unspeakably beautiful, serious countenance, only even more characteristically stamped—that old erect bearing with the tall, firm neck.
It was a picture which had stood within him all these years—of her who should have been his if he had attained to what he ought to have attained in life—if it had offered him what it should have—and if he himself had been what he ought to have been.