"You are only a stranger to me, sir, but--but----"
"Yes, I am only a stranger to you, my child, but we have come together on the great ocean of life, and now--now we must say good-by and part."
"Good-by, sir!"
"Good-by, little girl, and God bless you!"
The girl stepped to her bedroom door and then stopped and turned and looked back at him. Her eyes were full--she knew not why. Nature was saying something to her at last--she knew not what.
He was looking after her with all his hungry soul in his quivering face, and when she turned he stretched out his arms to her.
"Elin!" he whispered, and she came back to him, and he folded her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead and on the lips. Ah, sweet, soft, warm lips, he felt them to the last!
A mist floated before his eyes; he heard footsteps going away from him; he heard a door open and close, and then--his child was gone.
* * * * *
Christian Christiansson was alone. He felt that he had come to the lees of his life and saw nothing but a blank where he might crawl to die. Could he go back to Reykjavik? That was impossible, for the Minister and his people would be preparing their banquet in honor of his visit, and to go through such rejoicing would be a scorching martyrdom at which the devil himself would laugh. Could he return to England and resume his old life as the unknown composer? That was impossible also, for he could never write as he had written before, because the old impulse was gone, the fire was burnt out, the life that had inspired him was dead, and because the foundations of his fame were broken up by the new consciousness that he had no right to it, by the sense that his career and all that had come of it had been built on the desecration of his wife's grave, and by the certainty that his success had been paid for as by the sweat of his very soul.