quite elderly lady sat in the big arm-chair and held her court. It
could not be Mamsell Fredrika herself, for she lay sleeping in
quiet repose, and yet it was she. She sat there and held a
reception for old memories; the room was full of them. People and
homes and subjects and thoughts and discussions came flying.
Memories of childhood and memories of youth, love and tears, homage
and bitter scorn, all came rushing towards the pale form that sat
and looked at everything with a friendly smile. She had words of
jest or of sympathy for them all.

At night everything takes its right size and shape. And just as
then for the first time the stars of heaven are visible, one also
sees much on earth that one never sees by day. Now in the light of
the red buds of the Jericho rose one could see a crowd of strange
figures in Mamsell Fredrika's drawing-room. The hard "ma chère
mère" was there, the goodnatured Beata Hvardagslag, people from the
East and the West, the enthusiastic Nina, the energetic, struggling
Hertha in her white dress.

"Can any one tell me why that person must always be dressed in
white?" jested the little figure in the arm-chair when she caught
sight of her.

All the memories spoke to the old woman and said: "You have seen
and experienced so much; you have worked and earned so much! Are
you not tired? will you not go to rest?"

"Not yet," answered the shadow in the yellow arm-chair. "I have
still a book to write. I cannot go to rest before it is finished."