; and then added with a touch
of self-contempt, "the fact is, I ought never to go away from home. I am
like an anchovy; I don't bear taking out of the jar!

"She was so like the old Elizabeth as she stood there and told me all
this; it is years since I have seen her like that. There's not her match
to be found the whole world through.

"She has told me so often that she cares for me, has always cared for
me, ever since the time she was living with her grandfather out on the
rock; and an untruth never came from her lips. I'd stake my life upon
that.

"For truth--I believe you, Elizabeth, when you stand like that and tell
me so," and he struck the table as if he was making the declaration to
her face.

"But why should she care for me?" he went on. "Have her thoughts not
been running always on things much beyond what I, a poor pilot, and my
humble cottage can give her? Has she not always been hankering after
something grand?"

During these days, while this conflict of thought was surging to and fro
within him, he had the appearance of a man distraught; and if he ever
left the house, he could not rest until he had returned to it again. The
prolonged agitation of mind had told upon him, and he was sitting
now--the day before the one when he was to go in to Arendal again--alone
in his house, feeling very low and depressed; it looked so dreary and
empty.

Over in the window, by the leaf-table, where she generally sat to sew,
stood the polished buffalo-hoof which he had brought long ago as a
curiosity from Monte Video, and had since had made into a weight for
her; and by the wall, under the old print of the Naiad, was the
elephant, carved out of bone, which he had also had from the time when
he was roaming through the world as a sailor before the mast.

He gazed at these things for a while absently, and then went in to their
bedroom.

There was the chest of drawers by the wall, on which she always placed
the lacquered glass which hung in the other room, when she arranged her
beautiful hair. How many a conversation they had had together as she
stood there with her back to him; and what a figure she had! often
answering him with merely a change of expression as she looked back at
him over her shoulder. Everything in the room had some such vivid memory
to suggest; and as he sat dismally on the side of their bed, adjoining
which was little Henrik's, his thoughts were occupied with many a
trivial recollection of the kind,