wonderful, beloved form which stood dimly outlined before
him in the twilight. Then Edith's measure of misery, too, seemed full.
With the divine heedlessness which belongs to her sex, she rushed up
toward him, and remembering only that he was weak and unhappy, and that
he suffered for her sake, she took his face between her hands and kissed
him. He was too generous a man to misinterpret the act; so he whispered
but once more: "Farewell," and hastened away.

VII.

After that eventful December night, America was no more what it had been
to Halfdan Bjerk. A strange torpidity had come over him; every rising
day gazed into his eyes with a fierce unmeaning glare. The noise of the
street annoyed him and made him childishly fretful, and the solitude
of his own room seemed still more dreary and depressing. He went
mechanically through the daily routine of his duties as if the soul
had been taken out of his work, and left his life all barrenness and
desolation. He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times
of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to
exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened
into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain
toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior
partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully
in these days of sorrow. He was never effusive in his sympathy, but was
patiently forbearing with his friend's whims and moods, and humored
him as if he had been a sick child intrusted to his custody. That Edith
might be the moving cause of Olson's kindness was a thought which,
strangely enough, had never occurred to Halfdan.

At last, when spring came, the vacancy of his mind was suddenly invaded
with a strong desire to revisit his native land. He disclosed his plan
to Olson, who, after due deliberation and several visits to the Van Kirk
mansion, decided that the pleasure of seeing his old friends and the
scenes of his childhood might push the painful memories out of sight,
and renew his interest in life. So, one morning, while the May sun
shone with a soft radiance upon the beautiful harbor, our Norseman found
himself standing on the deck of a huge black-hulled Cunarder, shivering
in spite of the warmth, and feeling a chill loneliness creeping over him
at the sight of the kissing and affectionate leave-takings which were
going on all around him. Olson was