“A chair was brought to the hearth, for it was now dark and there was a little fire burning against the damp coolness of evening. They waited in vain for him to speak. It was as if he had come home. To Olga he was intensely memorable sitting there in the firelight. The others would draw near, and he leaned forward and looked into their faces smilingly, but it was not the same.... Now he was looking and looking around the room. He found her, and held out his hands. She heard her mother say, ‘This is Olga’s guest.’ “She had not believed his old arms could be so strong. With one hand he held her, while the other patted her shoulder softly, slowly,--as if he had everything he desired. All about her was the firelight and the strange joyous whiteness of him--his throat and collar and beard all lustrous white. In his arms there was something she had never known, even from her mother--a deep and limitless joy, as if the world were all good, and nothing could possibly happen that would not be the right good thing. “Then she became afraid her breast would burst, for the happiness was more and more. It had to do with the future, such a far distance of seeing, all rising and increasingly good--until Olga had to slip down from his knees, because the happiness in and through her was more than she could bear. “‘I will come back,’ she said hoarsely. “Outdoors she waited until the stars had steadied and were like the stars she knew, for they had been huge and blazing at first; then she returned and he stretched out his hands to her, and she heard her mother say, ‘Surely, this is Olga’s guest.’ “She did not remember how she got into her little bed. She heard the birds in the vines, and it was golden day when she awoke. Suddenly she knew that she had slept too long, that she would find him gone.... She thought of her little brown shoes on the road, but some one must have brought them in, for there they were by the bed.... He was no longer in the house, but she did not weep. There had been so much of wonder and beauty. She looked into her mother’s face, but did not ask. The mother smiled, as if waiting for her to speak. The other children must have been told, for they did not speak. “A thousand times Olga wished that she had awakened in time; often it came to her that she had not done all she could for her guest, but there was never real misery about it, and she was never quite the same after that perfect night. She thought it out bit by bit every day, but it was long, long afterward before she spoke, and this was to an elder sister, who--it was most strange and pitiful to Olga--seemed to have forgotten it all----”