XIV.
"Rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness."—Joel 2:13.
On Henrik's arrival in Norway, the harvesting was in full swing, and he busied himself with that. His friends, some of whom were surprised at his return, asked him what he had found in America, and he told them freely. Had he discovered the delusion in his American religion? No, he replied, his faith had been made stronger. Selma had relented somewhat, she making him welcome at her home in Christiania. Here he also met Marie. Henrik treated her as a friend with whom he had never had differences. When she saw him back again, browned and hardy, but the same gentle Henrik, Marie wondered, and by that wonder her resentment was modified, and she listened to his accounts of America and his relatives in Minnesota with much interest. As he spoke with an added enthusiasm of his cousin Rachel, the listeners opened their ears and eyes. He told them freely of his plans, and what he and Rachel were going to do.
"Yes," he said, "I can see the hand of the Lord in my finding Rachel."—Marie had her doubts, but she said nothing.—"It is all so wonderful to me, and I am only sorry that you folks can't see it!" But they replied nothing.
Henrik wrote often to Rachel, and the letters which he received in reply he usually handed to Selma, and Marie, if she was present. They pronounced them fine letters. "She must be a jolly girl," they said.
"She is," he affirmed; "the most religious and yet the merriest girl I have ever met. That seems a contradiction, but it isn't." Then he went on explaining, and they could not help listening. Henrik studied the two young women to see what impression he might be making. On Selma there was very little, but he believed Marie was overcoming some of her prejudice. Selma told him that Marie loved him as much as ever, and that if he deserted her, it would break her heart.
"But Selma," he exclaimed, "I have never deserted her. It was she who broke the engagement."
"How could she do otherwise;—but she has been waiting, and will still wait in hope."
"I, too, shall do that," he said.