o all in my power to make you as happy as
any man can make you who--"

"Who does not love me," she finished.

A sudden shudder seemed to shake her whole frame, and she drew herself
more tightly up to him.

"Ah, no," she continued, after a while, sinking back upon her seat.
"It is a hopeless thing to compel a reluctant heart. I will accept no
sacrifice from you. You owe me nothing, for you have acted toward me
honestly and uprightly, and I shall be a stronger or--at least--a better
woman for what you gave me--and--for what you could not give me, even
though you would."

"But, Bertha," exclaimed he, looking mournfully at her, "it is not true
when you say that I owe you nothing. Six years ago, when first I wooed
you, you could not return my love, and you sent me out into the world,
and even refused to accept any pledge or promise for the future."

"And you returned," she responded, "a man, such as my hope had pictured
you; but, while I had almost been standing still, you had outgrown me
and outgrown your old self, and, with your old self, outgrown its love
for me, for your love was not of your new self, but of the old. Alas! it
is a sad tale, but it is true."

She spoke gravely now, and with a steadier voice, but her eyes hung upon
his face with an eager look of expectation, as if yearning to detect
there some gleam of hope, some contradiction of the dismal truth. He
read that look aright and it pierced him like a sharp sword. He made a
brave effort to respond to its appeal, but his features seemed hard as
stone, and he could only cry out against his destiny, and bewail his
misfortune and hers.

Toward evening, Ralph was sitting in an open boat, listening to the
measured oar-strokes of the boatmen who were rowing him out to the
nearest stopping-place of the steamer. The mountains lifted their great
placid heads up among the sun-bathed clouds, and the fjord opened its
cool depths as if to make room for their vast reflections. Ralph felt as
if he were floating in the midst of the blue infinite space, and, with
the strength which this feeling inspired, he tried to face boldly the
thought from which he had but a moment ago shrunk as from something
hopelessly sad and perplexing.

And in that hour he looked fearlessly into the gulf which separates the
New World from the Old. He had hoped to bridge it; but, alas! it can not
be bridged.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Good-For-Nothing, by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen