ert, that Henrik
doesn't leave the quay."

He left them then, and went rapidly up the street.

Elizabeth was standing by the hearth expecting him; and something of a
Sunday calm seemed to have come over her as she stood there. She heard
him out in the passage; and when he entered, a rapid flush passed over
her fine features, but it disappeared again immediately, and she stared
at him with half-open lips, forgetting to greet him. At the same time,
there was a conscious self-possession in her bearing which did not
escape him. That was the Elizabeth he loved.

He came to the point at once; and looking her full in the face, began
with great earnestness--"Elizabeth, I have a serious accusation to make
against you. You have not been frank towards me--you have disguised your
real feelings from me for many years, I am afraid during the whole time
we have lived together."

He spoke gently, and as though he had no desire to press the charge, but
merely waited to hear her make a full acknowledgment before he forgave
her. She stood, however, without raising her eyes from the ground, her
face pale, and her bosom heaving.

"And yet how I have loved you, Elizabeth!--more dearly than my life," he
added.

She still remained for a moment silent, and had to summon all her
courage now to speak. At last she said, in a rather strained voice, and
without lifting her eyes--

"I hear you say it, Salve. But I have been thinking a good deal lately."

"You have been thinking, Elizabeth?" he repeated, "what have you been
thinking?" and his expression changed in a moment to the dark, stern one
she knew so well. He had made his advance; further he would not go.

"Am I right, or am I not?" he asked, sharply.

"No, Salve, you are not right," she replied, turning to him now with a
look that seemed fired by all she had endured; "you are not right. It is
yourself, and yourself only, you have loved all along; and when you took
me as your wife, you merely took another to help you. There were two
about it then, and even so it was not enough. No! no!" she cried,
striking out her hand with an emphatic gesture in the bitterness of her
feeling--"if you had loved me as I have loved you, we would not be
standing before one another as we are this day!"

He was taken aback for a moment by this unexpected outburst, but replied
in a cold hard voice, while his eyes never moved from her face, "I thank
you, Elizabeth, for having at last told me your thoughts