How could it be that no one had ever told her of this? She sat down on a stone and rested there a long while, drinking in the light with her eyes. Her eyes wandered over the wide expanse, looking as far as they pleased, like birds released from a close cage. And she thanked God for her home, and for the sea, so great and strong and clean, so near her. She must have sat there long without speaking. When she looked up, the young workman had gone. Truth to tell, she was pleased at this. She could always thank him, another time. It was pleasanter now to be alone. She felt stronger now, and more hopeful--better able to fight against the stifling sense of something threatening that hung over the plain. Suddenly she remembered her husband--he might be anxious about her. And she rose to go home, to tell him that she was better now, and happier. And to thank him for his sternness in sending her out to face her trouble boldly. SAILING IT WAS a Sunday morning in late October. A heavy wind came sweeping up from the south, from lands where the air was yet warm, where roses still budded and bloomed, where the vines were newly stripped, and the juice of the grape foamed in the presses. The heavy south wind spoke with a strange, disquieting sound. Listening to it, one felt confused, as if hearing a stranger speak in some foreign tongue. Who could say what it was trying to tell--whether some great secret, or merely a whisper of all the yellowing trees, the fallen wings of butterflies, the empty nests, it had passed on its way? That Sunday, Sven Elversson had come over in the boat to land his father at the little harbour outside the barrier rocks of Applum; the old man had gone in to service at the church. But Sven did not go with him; as soon as his father had gone, he sought out a cleft in the rocks a little to the right. It was a place he knew well; he had lain there often on the green heather as a child. This was the happiest time Sven Elversson had known since his return. The patient, sorrowful smile had begun to fade from his lips, and the bitter trouble that had filled his soul no longer tortured him as before. And as he lay there on a ledge of rock, listening to the wind, wondering what it was trying to tell him, and staring out over the sea, he called to mind a vision he had seen one day, when he had been lying just as now on a rocky slope by the shore, with a broad expanse of sea spread out before him. The bright glitter of the sunlight on the water had tired his eyes, and he had lain quite still for a long time. Then, suddenly opening his eyes and glancing down at the great water, he had seen a mermaid. It was only the briefest glimpse; she was gone the moment his eyes fell on her, changed to a fleck of white mist that floated away over the water.