he secret of true love's
victory over everything here on earth, and was only gone in advance,
with white wings on her shoulders, to teach it to me, since God had not
allowed her to share the burden of my cross here below.

When I noticed that they wanted me to go, I silently repeated "Our
Father" over her as a last farewell, pressed one gentle kiss upon her
brow, then one upon her mouth, and one upon her folded hands where the
bronze ring was, and went out without looking back.

Two days after, I followed Susanna's remains to the grave.

* * * * *

One sunshiny day in winter, when I as usual visited the place where she
rested in the churchyard, the snow had drifted over her grave. It lay
pure and dazzlingly white, with the fine upper edge like translucent
marble in the sunlight.

I took this to mean that Susanna would have me think of her in her
shining bridal dress before God, in order to give me courage to go my
lonely way through life, and not to fear that the hardest of all
trials--even insanity, if it came and enthralled me in its
confusion--could separate us.

* * * * *

Late in the summer, when I was to go south by the steamer, together with
the minister and his wife, who had both, in a short time, aged
perceptibly, and who were now moving to a southern parish, I went for
the last time to take leave of my sorrowful friend, the clerk.

He played the beautiful, joyful, beloved piece again for me, which he
had composed when he was twenty, and which I had thought suited Susanna
and me so well, and now he played the continuation too--it was
wonderfully touching and sad, but with comfort in it, like a psalm.

* * * * *

Thus ends a poor, delicate Nordlander's simple story; for to tell how,
with my father's help, I became a student with "_laud_" [There are four
grades in the Academic Degrees Examination--viz., _laudabilis prae
ceteris, laudabilis, haud illaudabilis_, and _non-contemnendus_.]--he
died the same year that I passed my _Examen artium_, a respected but
ruined man--and how I afterwards became something of a literary man, a
private tutor and a master in a school, is only to relate the outward
circumstances of a monotonous life, whose thoughts all dwell in the
past.

My love for Susanna has, as she said to me with such confidence, been
the fountain of health that saved me from the worst madness. When
restle