“I have just been telling Mr. Osmond,” he said, “that, thanks to your note to Swanhild, a curious mystery has been explained; he will tell you the details.” “And you forgive me?” faltered Blanche. “Yes, with all my heart,” he said. For a moment her sorrowful eyes looked into his; she knew then that he had entirely freed himself from his old devotion to her, for they met her gaze frankly, fearlessly, and in their blue depths there was nothing but kindly forgiveness. “Thank you,” she said, once more taking his hand. “Good-by.” “Good-by,” he replied. She turned away and went upstairs without another word. And thus, on this Christmas eve, the two whose lives had been so strangely woven together parted, never to meet again till the clearer light of some other world had revealed to them the full meaning of their early love. CHAPTER XXXVI. For a time Frithiof was rather silent and quiet, but Sigrid and Swanhild were in high spirits as they went down to Rowan Tree House, arriving just in time for supper. The atmosphere of happiness, however, is always infectious, and he soon threw off his taciturnity, and dragging himself away from his own engrossing thoughts, forgot the shadows of life in the pure brightness of this home which had been so much to him ever since he first set foot in it. With Swanhild for an excuse they played all sorts of games; but when at last she had been sent off to bed, the fun and laughter quieted down, Mr. and Mrs. Boniface played their nightly game of backgammon; Roy and Sigrid had a long _tête-à-tête_ in the little inner drawing-room; Cecil sat down at the piano and began to play Mendelssohn’s Christmas pieces; and Frithiof threw himself back in the great arm-chair close by her, listening half dreamily and with a restful sense of pause in his life that he had never before known. He desired nothing, he reveled in the sense of freedom from the love which for so long had been a misery to him; the very calm was bliss. “That is beautiful,” he said, when the music ceased. “After all there is no one like Mendelssohn, he is so human.” “You look like one of the lotos-eaters,” said Cecil, glancing at him. “It is precisely what I feel like,” he said, with a smile. “Perhaps it is because you have been giving me ‘Music that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.’ I remember so well how you read that to me after I had been ill.” She took a thin little red volume from the bookshelves beside her and turned over the leaves. He bent forward to look over her, and together they read the first part of the poem. “It is Norway,” he said. “What could better describe it?” “A land of streams! Some like a downward smoke, Slow dripping veils of thinnest lawn did go; And some through wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.