“It may be so,” she admitted, yet with a latent consciousness that so infinite a thing as love could not be bound by any hard and fast rules. “But I cannot help it. Whether it is womanly or not, I would die to give him the least real comfort.” “Tell Harris to stop, Cecil,” said Mrs. Boniface. “We will get some grapes for Mr. Falck.” And glad to escape from the carriage for a minute, and glad, too, to be of use even in such a far-off way, Cecil went into the fruiterer’s, returning before long with a beautiful basket of grapes and flowers. CHAPTER XIX. “See what I have brought you,” said Sigrid, re-entering the sick-room a little later on. Frithiof took the basket and looked, with a pleasure which a few weeks ago would have been impossible to him, at the lovely flowers and fruit. “You have come just at the right time, for he will insist on talking of all the deepest things in heaven and earth,” said Roy, “and this makes a good diversion.” “They are from Mrs. Boniface. Is it not kind of her! And do you know, Frithiof, she and Doctor Morris have been making quite a deep plot; they want to transplant us bodily to Rowan Tree House, and Doctor Morris thinks the move could do you no harm now that you are getting better.” His face lighted up with something of its former expression. “How I should like never to see this hateful room again!” he exclaimed. “You don’t know how I detest it. The old ghosts seem to haunt it still. There is nothing that I can bear to look at except your picture of Bergen, which has done me more than one good turn.” Sigrid, partly to keep him from talking too much, partly because she always liked to tell people of that little act of kindness, gave Roy the history of the picture, and Frithiof lay musing over the curious relative power of kindness and cruelty, and was obliged, though somewhat reluctantly, to admit to himself that a very slight act of kindness certainly did exert an enormous and unthought-of influence. Physical disorder had had much to do with the black view of life which he had held for the last few months, but now that the climax had been reached and rest had been forced upon him, his very exhaustion and helplessness enabled him to see a side of life which had never before been visible to him. He was very much softened by all that he had been through. It seemed that while the events of the past year had imbittered and hardened him, this complete breakdown of bodily strength had brought back something of his old nature. The bright enjoyment of mere existence could of course never return to him, but still, notwithstanding the scar of his old wound, there came to him during those days of his convalescence a sense of keen pleasure in Sigrid’s presence, in his gradually returning strength, and in the countless little acts of kindness which everybody showed him.