The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thelma, by Marie Corelli

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Title: Thelma

Author: Marie Corelli

Release Date: October 13, 2006 [EBook #3823]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THELMA

BY MARIE CORELLI

THELMA.

BOOK I.

THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

CHAPTER I.

"Dream by dream shot through her eyes, and each
Outshone the last that lighted."
SWINBURNE.

Midnight,--without darkness, without stars! Midnight--and the unwearied
sun stood, yet visible in the heavens, like a victorious king throned on
a dais of royal purple bordered with gold. The sky above him,--his
canopy,--gleamed with a cold yet lustrous blue, while across it slowly
flitted a few wandering clouds of palest amber, deepening, as they
sailed along, to a tawny orange. A broad stream of light falling, as it
were, from the centre of the magnificent orb, shot lengthwise across the
Altenfjord, turning its waters to a mass of quivering and shifting color
that alternated from bronze to copper,--from copper to silver and azure.
The surrounding hills glowed with a warm, deep violet tint, flecked here
and there with touches of bright red, as though fairies were lighting
tiny bonfires on their summits. Away in the distance a huge mass of rock
stood out to view, its rugged lines transfigured into ethereal
loveliness by a misty veil of tender rose pink,--a hue curiously
suggestive of some other and smaller sun that might have just set.
Absolute silence prevailed. Not even the cry of a sea-mew or kittiwake
broke the almost deathlike stillness,--no breath of wind stirred a
ripple on the glassy water. The whole scene might well have been the
fantastic dream of some imaginative painter, whose ambition soared
beyond the limits of human skill. Yet it was only one of those million
wonderful effects of sky and sea which are common in Norway, especially
on the Altenfjord, where, though beyond the Arctic ci