At length the day came when they were to leave Rowan Tree House. Every one was sorry to lose them, and they felt going very much, for it was impossible to express how much those restful weeks had done for them both. They each tried to say something of the sort to Mr. and Mrs. Boniface, but not very successfully, for Sigrid broke down and cried, and Frithiof felt that to put very deep gratitude into words is a task which might well baffle the readiest speaker. However, there was little need for speech on either side. “And when you want change or rest,” said Mrs. Boniface, shaking his hand warmly, “you have only got to lock up your rooms and come down here to us. There will always be a welcome ready for the three of you. Don’t forget that.” “Let it be your second home,” said Mr. Boniface. Cecil, who was the one to feel most, said least. She merely shook hands with him, made some trifling remark about the time of Swanhild’s train, and wished him good-by; then, with a sore heart, watched the brother and sister as they stepped into the carriage and drove away. That chapter of her life was over, and she was quite well aware that the next chapter would seem terribly dull and insipid. For a moment the thought alarmed her. “What have I been doing,” she said to herself, “to let this love get so great a hold on me? Why is it that no other man in the world seems to me worth a thought, even though he may be better, and may live a nobler life than Frithiof?” She could not honestly blame herself, for it seemed to her that this strange love had, as the poet says, “Slid into her soul like light.” Unconsciously it had begun at their very first meeting on the steamer at Bergen; it had caused that vague trouble and uneasiness which had seized her at Balholm, and had sprung into conscious existence when Frithiof had come to them in England, poor, heartbroken, and despairing. The faithlessness of another woman had revealed to her the passionate devotion which surged in her own heart, and during these weeks of close companionship her love had deepened inexpressibly. She faced these facts honestly, with what Mrs. Horner would have termed “an entire absence of maidenly propriety.” For luckily Cecil was not in the habit of marshalling her thoughts into the prim routine prescribed by the world in general, she had deeper principles to fall back upon than the conventionalities of such women as Mrs. Horner, and she did not think it well either willfully to blind herself to the truth, or to cheat her heart into believing a lie. Quite quietly she admitted to herself that she loved Frithiof, with a pain which it was impossible to ignore, she allowed that he did not love her, and that it was quite possible—nay, highly probable—that she might never be fit to be more to him than a friend.