"Then she's not coming home?" Jan asked.

"No, not for the present, as I understand it," replied the senator.

Again Jan lay down on the bed and turned his face to the wall.

What did he care for the hut and all that? What was the good of his
going on living, when his little girl was not coming back?


THE DREAM BEGINS

The first few weeks after the senator's call Jan was unable to do a
stroke of work: he just lay abed and grieved. Every morning he rose
and put on his clothes, intending to go to his work; but before he
was outside the door he felt so weak and weary that all he could do
was to go back to bed.

Katrina tried to be patient with Jan, for she understood that
pining, like any other sickness, had to run its course. Yet she
could not help wondering how long it would be before Jan's intense
yearning for Glory Goldie subsided. "Perhaps he'll be lying round
like this till Christmas!" she thought. "Or possibly the whole
winter?"

And this might have been the case, too, had not the old seine-maker
dropped in at Ruffluck one evening and been asked to stay for
coffee.