e was a gentleman."

"Was he?"

"Heaven! haven't I managed to give you that impression?"

"Yes, yes--but others have----" She was silent, and the mother paused.

"Magne! I have not been able, I have not wished, to shield you from all
this. As long as you were a child, a young girl, I could not explain
everything to you exactly as it was. It would also have led you to try
to defend that which you had not yet the power to defend, and that
would have done you harm. And there was something else besides.

"But now you shall know it. Since your childhood I have never given you
any advice which did not come from your father. You never saw him, but
all the same I can say that you have never seen nor heard anything but
him. Through me, you understand!"

"How so, mother?"

"Well, we are coming to that. Now I must make you understand how I came
to marry him."

"Yes, dear!"

"He stood there on the platform and drank down water, glass after
glass. He drank the entire contents of the water-bottle and called for
more. The people laughed, and he laughed. He held the water-bottle and
glass in a drunken grasp, and he looked up and round him, as though he
was not properly conscious of himself or of us. And he laughed. But
through it all I saw the godlike in him.

"A free man's open, joyous spirit, dear; unruffled self-reliance in
reaching out for that which he needed. You should have seen his firm,
capable hands, hardened by toil. And his face--the face of a man who
overflows with all good gifts."

"What did people say?"

"They knew him, they were only amused. And he was amused. When he began
to speak he had his tongue completely under control. It seemed to me
that the voice was unnatural, it sounded as though it came from inward
depths. But it was his natural voice. He had hardly begun when
something happened. A crowd of ladies and gentlemen strolled by, among
them some of the Queen's suite. We could see them from our place near
the window, and he saw them too; we saw that they pointed in.

"He stopped short, turned quite pale, and drew a breath so deep that we
all heard it. Then he drank more water. It was long before he could go
on speaking. They all looked at him, some whispered among themselves.
Up to now he had spoken like a great machine which gives the first
irregular beats with pauses between. But now he rose, and when he began
to speak again he was sober. I tell you he was absolutely sober. Let me
tell you by de