a common sailor. She stood there
trembling all over, and fumbling with the latch of the door in the
greatest agitation, evidently debating with herself whether she should
dare go in again. She pressed upon the latch, in the certainty that it
would go up before she had actually decided that she would go in; and it
did so. The door opened again of itself, and Elizabeth entered with
downcast eyes, and scarlet in the face, and passed through the room,
making a slight inclination of her head, as if for greeting, as she
passed him. She had reached the opposite door when she heard a quiet
bitter laugh behind her.

At once she turned, with pride in every feature of her face, and looked
at him.

"How do you do, Salve Kristiansen?" she said, firmly and quietly.

"How do you do, Elizabeth?" he replied, rather huskily, getting up and
looking confused.

"Are you lying here in Amsterdam with some vessel?"

He sat down again, for there was something in her manner that denied
approach.

"No; in Puermurende," he replied. "I only came in here to--"

"You are in the timber line, then, now?"

"Yes--Elizabeth," he ventured to add, in another tone, which had a whole
volume of meaning in it. But she took her leave of him now in the same
proud manner, and left the room.

Salve sat for a while with compressed lips, looking down upon the table
before him. When she turned round the first time at the door, something
told him that she would come in again; but he had expected quite a
different kind of scene. A good deal of the tyrant had been developed in
him since they had last met; and when she had come in so quietly and so
humbly, with the acknowledgment of the great wrong she had done him
written upon her face, he felt himself at once, with a certain bitter
and devouring pleasure, upon the judgment-seat. He must first see her
crushed before him; then he would have forgiven her, and loved her with
all the passion of his soul.

But as she stood there by the door, looking so grand in her pride, and
so pale with repressed mortification, and spoke so calmly, he had felt
that in that moment he had been separated farther from her than ever he
had been in all his wanderings at the other side of the globe.

He sat there with his mind in a chaotic state of desperation and sorrow,
and of anger with himself. What a grand creature she was! and he--how
pitiful and petty! He set down the mug, which he had been absently
toying with, hard on the t