knot of nerves becomes the centre of a radiating delight. But he left
her bruised and wearied as some young girl endeavoring to keep step
with a giant.

The cold air, with its stinging flagellations, had begun to still the
nervous tremors which followed the reunion of his two natures, so
powerfully disunited for a time; he was drawn towards the parsonage,
then towards Minna, by the sight of the every-day home life for which
he thirsted as the wandering European thirsts for his native land when
nostalgia seizes him amid the fairy scenes of Orient that have seduced
his senses. More weary than he had ever yet been, Wilfrid dropped into
a chair and looked about him for a time, like a man who awakens from
sleep. Monsieur Becker and his daughter accustomed, perhaps, to the
apparent eccentricity of their guest, continued the employments in
which they were engaged.

The parlor was ornamented with a collection of the shells and insects
of Norway. These curiosities, admirably arranged on a background of
the yellow pine which panelled the room, formed, as it were, a rich
tapestry to which the fumes of tobacco had imparted a mellow tone. At
the further end of the room, opposite to the door, was an immense
wrought-iron stove, carefully polished by the serving-woman till it
shone like burnished steel. Seated in a large tapestried armchair near
the stove, before a table, with his feet in a species of muff,
Monsieur Becker was reading a folio volume which was propped against a
pile of other books as on a desk. At his left stood a jug of beer and
a glass, at his right burned a smoky lamp fed by some species of
fish-oil. The pastor seemed about sixty years of age. His face belonged
to a type often painted by Rembrandt; the same small bright eyes, set
in wrinkles and surmounted by thick gray eyebrows; the same white hair