What part had that passionate first love of his played in his life-story? Well, it had been to him a curse; it had dragged him down into depths of despair and to the verge of vice; it had steeped him in bitterness and filled his heart with anguish. Yet a more perfect love had awaited him—a passion less fierce but more tender, less vehement but more lasting; and all those years Cecil’s heart had really been his, though he had so little dreamed of it. As if in a picture, he saw the stages through which he had passed—the rapture of mere physical existence; the intolerable pain and humiliation of Blanche’s betrayal; the anguish of bereavement; the shame of bankruptcy; the long effort to pay the debts; the slow return to belief in human beings; the toilsome steps that had each brought him a clearer knowledge of the Unseen, for which he had once felt no need; and, finally, this wonderful love springing up like a fountain in his life, ready to gladden his somewhat prosaic round of daily work. It was evening when they left the steamer at Sogndal, but they were none of them in a mood for settling down, and indeed the weather was so hot that they often preferred traveling after supper. So it was arranged that they should go on to a very primitive little place called Hillestad, sleep there for a few hours, and then proceed to the Lyster fjord. Cecil, who was a much better walker than either Sigrid or Swanhild, was to go on foot with Frithiof; the others secured a stolkjaerre and a carriole, and went on in advance with the luggage. The two lovers walked briskly along the side of the fjord, but slackened their pace when they reached the long, sandy hill, with its sharp zigzags; the evening was still and cloudless; above them towered huge, rocky cliffs, partly veiled by undergrowth, and all the air was sweet with the scent of the pine trees. They were close to St. Olaf’s well, where, from time immemorial, the country people have come to drink and pray for recovery from illness. “Don’t you think we ought to drink to my future health,” said Frithiof. He smiled, yet in his eyes she saw all the time the look of sadness that had come to him as they approached Balholm. The one sting in his perfect happiness was the thought that he could not bring to Cecil the unbroken health that had once been his. He knew that the strain of his passed trouble had left upon him marks which he must carry to his grave, and that the consequences of Blanche’s faithlessness had brought with them a secret anxiety which must to some extent shadow Cecil’s life. The knowledge was hard: it humiliated him. Cecil knew him so well that she read his thoughts in an instant. “Look at all these little crosses set up in the moss on this rock!” she exclaimed when they had scrambled up the steep ascent. “I wonder how many hundreds of years this has been the custom? I wonder how many troubled people have come here to drink?” “And have gained nothing by their superstition?” said Frithiof.