instant, that he was a foreigner. Then, to
touch that delicate Elizabethan frill which
wound itself so daintily about Edith's neck--
what inconceivable rapture! But it was quite
impossible. It could never be. These were
selfish thoughts, no doubt, but they were a lover's
selfishness, and, as such, bore a close kinship to
all that is purest and best in human nature.

It is one of the tragic facts of this life, that a
relation so unequal as that which existed between
Halfdan and Edith, is at all possible. As
for Edith, I must admit that she was well aware
that her teacher was in love with her. Women
have wonderfully keen senses for phenomena of
that kind, and it is an illusion if any one
imagines, as our Norseman did, that he has locked
his secret securely in the hidden chamber of his
heart. In fleeting intonations, unconscious
glances and attitudes, and through a hundred
other channels it will make its way out, and the
bereaved jailer may still clasp his key in fierce
triumph, never knowing that he has been
robbed. It was of course no fault of Edith's
that she had become possessed of Halfdan's
heart-secret. She regarded it as on the whole
rather an absurd affair, and prized it very
lightly. That a love so strong and yet so humble,
so destitute of hope and still so unchanging,
reverent and faithful, had something grand and