He made no comment, but in his heart he was glad that both Mrs. Horner and Roy should have proved faithless, and that the duty of seeing Cecil home had devolved upon him. “You have not met my mother since she came back from the sea,” said Cecil. “Are you still afraid of infection? The house has been thoroughly painted and fumigated.” “Oh, it is not that,” said Frithiof “but while this cloud is still over me, I can’t come. You do not realize how it affects everything.” Perhaps she realized much more than he fancied, but she only said. “It does not affect your own home.” “No, that’s true,” said Frithiof. “It has made me value that more, and it has made me value your friendship more. But, you see, you are the only one at Rowan Tree House who still believes in me; and how you manage to do it passes my comprehension—when there is nothing to prove me innocent.” “None of the things which we believe in most can be absolutely proved,” said Cecil. “I can’t logically justify my belief in you any more than in our old talks I could justify my belief in the unseen world.” “Do you remember that first Sunday when I was staying with you, and you asked me whether I had found a Norwegian church!” “Yes, very well. It vexed me so much to have said anything about it; but you see, I had always lived with people who went to church or chapel as regularly as they took their meals.” “Well, do you know I was wrong; there is a Norwegian church down near the Commercial Docks at Rotherhithe.” And then lured on by her unspoken sympathy, and favored by the darkness, he told her of the strong influence which the familiar old chorale had had upon him, and how it had carried him back to the time of his confirmation—that time which to all Norwegians is full of deep meaning and intense reality, so that even in the indifferentism of later years and the fogs of doubt which pain and trouble conjure up, its memory still lingers, ready to be touched into life at the very first opportunity. “It is too far for Sigrid and Swanhild to go very often, but to me it is like a bit of Norway planted down in this great wilderness of houses,” he said. “It was strange that I should have happened to come across it so unexpectedly just at the time when I most needed it.” “But that surely is what always happens,” said Cecil. “When we really need a thing we get it.” “You learned before I did to distinguish between needing and wanting,” said Frithiof. “It comes to some people easily, I suppose. But I, you see, had to lose everything before understanding—to lose even my reputation for common honesty. Even now it seems to be hardly possible that life should go on under such a cloud as that. Yet the days pass somehow, and I believe that it was this trouble which drove me to what I really needed.”