"The voice of the night wind sounded so much like the voice of the old flax-spinner that Olga was startled and looked around wonderingly. Then suddenly she seemed to see the little thatched cottage and the bent form of the lonely old woman at the wheel. All the years in which the good dame had befriended her seemed to rise up in a row, and out of each one called a thousand kindnesses as with one voice: 'How canst thou forget us, Olga? We were done for thee, for love's sweet sake, and that alone.' "Then was Olga sorry and ashamed that she had been so proud and forgetful, and she wept again. The tears seemed to clear her vision, for now she saw plainly that through no power of her own could she wrest strange favours from fortune. Only the power of the old charm could make them hers. She remembered it then, and holding fast to the one bead in her hand, she repeated, humbly: "'For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need, Blossom and deck me, little seed.' "Lo, as the words left her lips, the moon shone out from behind the clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about her, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness of the fairest lily. It was fine, like the finest lace that the frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On her long golden hair gleamed a coronet of pearls. "So beautiful, so dazzling was she as she entered the castle door, that the prince came down to meet her, and kneeling, kissed her hand, and claimed her as his bride. Then came the bishop in his mitre, and led her to the throne, and before them all the flax-spinner's maiden was married to the prince, and made the Princess Olga. "Then, until the seven days and seven nights were done, the revels lasted in the castle. And in the merriment the old flax-spinner was again forgotten. Her kindness of the past, her loneliness in the present, had no part in the thoughts of the Princess Olga. "But the beads that had rolled away into the darkness buried themselves in the earth, and took root and sprang up. There at the castle gate they bloomed, a strange, strange flower, for on every stem hung a row of little bleeding hearts. "One day the Princess Olga, seeing them from her window, went down to them in wonderment. 'What do you here?' she cried, for in her lonely forest life she had learned all speech of bird and beast and plant. "'We bloom for love's sweet sake,' they answered. 'We have sprung from the old flax-spinner's gift,--the necklace thou didst break and scatter. From her heart's best blood she gave it, and her heart still bleeds to think she is forgotten.'