cannot live without. Look!" She drew from her
breast a little case of blue silk, hung by a red cord round her neck,
"See--it just reaches to there!"

"It's very pretty," said Olof in relief, taking the case in his hand."
And you want something to put in it?"

"Yes."

"A lock of hair or something? Are you as childish as all that?"

"No--not as childish as all that."

"A flower, then--or what?"

"No, nothing like that."

"You want me to write something, then?"

"No, no. I want yourself--your very self!"

Olof looked at her blankly--he could not guess what was in her mind.
He felt himself more and more in the power of something he had been
striving to escape.

"Oh, don't you understand? Your portrait."

"But--but I have only one. And--I have never given anyone my
portrait."

"No," said the girl confidently. "You have kept it for me."

Olof felt himself shamed. What a poor creature he was grown! Why could
he not rise up and take this strange rare child in his arms, and swear
by all he revered that she had touched his inmost heart, that he was
hers alone, for ever?

He sprang to his feet, and cried earnestly, "Yes! It was taken for
you, and for no other!"

But the words ended in a sob--it was as if his blood were turned to
sand. With trembling fingers he took out the portrait, and sank down
as if paralysed into his seat.

The girl watched him with a starry gleam of ecstasy in her eyes.

But he could not meet her glance--he bent his head, thinking bitterly
to himself, "What have I come to? Why do I cheat her and myself, why
do I give these beggar's crumbs to one that should have all?"

The girl sat still with the same light of wonder in her eyes, looking
now at the portrait, now at Olof himself.

"Yes, it is really you," she said at last, and touching the picture
with her lips, she laid it in the case, and slipped it into her bosom.

"Now I have nothing more to ask," she said. "I shall thank you all
my life for this. When you are gone, you will be with me still. I can
talk to you at night before I sleep, and in the morning you will be
the first thing I see. I can whisper to you just as I used to do. And
when I am dead, you shall be buried with me."

Olof was overwhelmed with emotion--it was as if something within him
had been rent asunder. He looked at the girl's face--how pure and holy
it was! Why could not he himself be as she was? What was it that had
happened to him?

He felt an impulse to t