realize how deeply they, have sinned toward the dead woman.
The sister seeks a reconciliation with her brother, but he
repulses her, and gives her his wife's private diary to read.
In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation of the
gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that
the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her
brother's forgiveness. The closing chapter, in which the final
reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all
fiction; its pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and
he must be callous of soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.

If we were to search the whole of Bjornson's writings for the
single passage which should most completely typify his message
to his fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the
choice would have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit
by the clergyman of this novel, on the Sunday following the
certainty of his child's recovery.

"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he
had learned.
"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal
for conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the
conceit of his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we
have all learned it more or less ill. For should I ask you who
hear me now, you would all reply thoughtlessly, and just because
I ask you from this place, 'Faith is first.'
"No, in very truth, it is not. Watch over your child, as it
struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see
your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside