into a
life like that? If only I could find one thing in it all that
mattered greatly, one thing that would warm me when I am alone! Will
life never give me that one great moment?"

As she raised the window, she heard a sound in the plum-bushes
outside. It was only the house-dog roused from his sleep, but
Margaret started violently and trembled so that she caught the foot
of the bed for support. Again she felt herself pursued by some
overwhelming longing, some desperate necessity for herself, like the
outstretching of helpless, unseen arms in the darkness, and the air
seemed heavy with sighs of yearning. She fled to her bed with the
words, "I love you more than Christ, who died for me!" ringing in
her ears.

III.

About midnight the dance at Lockhart's was at its height. Even the
old men who had come to "look on" caught the spirit of revelry and
stamped the floor with the vigor of old Silenus. Eric took the
violin from the Frenchman, and Minna Oleson sat at the organ, and
the music grew more and more characteristic--rude, half-mournful
music, made up of the folk-songs of the North, that the villagers
sing through the long night in hamlets by the sea, when they are
thinking of the sun, and the spring, and the fishermen so long away.
To Margaret some of it sounded like Grieg's Peer Gynt music. She
found something irresistibly infectious in the mirth of these people
who were so seldom merry, and she felt almost one of them. Something
seemed struggling for freedom in them to-night, something of the
joyous childhood of the nations which exile had not killed. The
girls were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them but
rarely, and when it came, they caught at it wildly and crushed its
fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life
enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor and
drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short
wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless
sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood.
But what matter? To-night there was hot liquor in the glass and hot
blood in the heart; to-night they danced.

To-night Eric Hermannson had renewed his youth. He was no longer the
big, silent Norwegian who had sat at Margaret's feet and looked
hopelessly into her eyes. To-night he was a man, with a man's rights
and a man's power. To-night he was Siegfried indeed. His hair was
yellow as the h