This made Thora think of Magnus, but she heard Oscar laughing in the room below, and soon forgot everything else in a delicious shuddering which suddenly came over her. Anna helped her to undress, and when the crown and the kirtle were laid aside, she moved about for some moments without speaking. Then she said, softly:
"Will you go to bed now, dearest, or shall I give you your dressing-gown?"
"Give me my dressing-gown," said Thora faintly.
Anna moved about on tiptoe a moment or two longer, turning the lamp down and fixing the shade. Then she opened the door and stood for an instant on the threshold looking back at Thora where she sat combing out her hair before the stove. All at once her middle-aged, homely face became young and beautiful by the magic of a memory of her own, and going softly back she kissed Thora without saying a word, and then crept silently out of the room.
Left alone, Thora looked timidly around her, and seeing things of Oscar's lying among her own she felt a new and still more delicious sense of happiness. During the days preceding the wedding she had thought that as soon as the service in the cathedral had come to an end and she was Oscar's wife a mysterious change would come over her, but that had not been so, and all day long she had felt quite the same. But now it was different, and in this room she had become another being--not herself only, but Oscar also. It was very sweet and beautiful, but it was a little frightening, too, and to ease her fast-beating heart she got into bed and covered up her face.
She could hear the company breaking up below, and a little later she heard their footsteps crunching the snow under her window, which fronted the road. They stood there and sang a bridal song. It was the song of the "Two Roses."
The winter was cold and the ground was white, but two roses of love still grew in the garden of God. The frost could not freeze the two roses of love, for they were warmed by the air of heaven; the sun could not scorch the two roses of love, for they were watered from the well of life. Two roses of love on a single stem; two roses of love in two fond young hearts; two roses of love and joy!
When the song came to an end there was some merry giggling under the window, followed by shouts of "Good night, Thora!" "Happy dreams!" Then as the company went off they started the bridal song again, and in her mind's eye Thora could see them going back to the town, arm in arm, young girls and young men.
Thora listened to the voices dying down the street, and for a moment all life seemed to be set to the music of love; Oscar and she would be children always, never growing older, but rambling hand in hand through a flowery world where everybody loved them and they loved everybody, and there could be no real trouble because love was all in all.
But just then the cathedral clock struck eleven, and she remembered Magnus. She could see him crossing the desolate white heath under the shooting stream of the northern lights--a lonesome man riding one horse, while another, with an empty saddle, was running by his side. Poor Magnus! But there was no help for it!