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Ragna

by Anna Miller Costantini · English · Gutenberg #41863 · 628,133 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Ragna
        a novel

Author: Anna Miller Costantini


        
Release date: January 18, 2013 [eBook #41863]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41863

Credits: E-text prepared by D Alexander, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAGNA ***

RAGNA

A Novel

by

MADAME ANNA COSTANTINI







New York
Sturgis & Walton
Company
1910

All rights reserved

Copyright 1910
By Sturgis & Walton Company

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1910




RAGNA




BOOK I




CHAPTER I


We see her first, a tall child with wind-blown hair standing on the
rocky point of a barren promontory where fjord and ocean meet, wild as
the sea-birds that circle about her head--indeed at this time wildness
was the keynote of her nature. The household tasks and lessons disposed
of, she spent the rest of the day in rambles over the rugged country
side, or in exploits that kept the older members of the family in
breathless suspense. It was she who mounted bareback the unbroken horses
in the pasture, she who sailed her boat down the foaming fjord in the
teeth of the storm. Danger heightened her enjoyment, and true descendant
of the vikings of old, she looked her best, lithe and straight,
breasting the gale, the joy of the struggle gleaming in her sea-blue
eyes, flushing her cheeks, her long golden hair flung out on the wind
like a triumphal banner.

Her home was a long, low, timber house, sheltering amid pines and firs,
under the lee of a high rocky hill, a home built for the long northern
winters, the long months when the country lay snow-bound. The winter
afternoons and evenings were spent in sewing or embroidery, when the
father or the mother read aloud, or grandmother told tales of the Old
Times, and of the family. The favourite was that of brave young Uncle
Olaf, who had sailed to the frozen North in his whaler, never to return.
Grandmother always wept at the end of this tale, and father would wipe
his spectacles and gaze intently into the fire, but to the children it
was a splendid myth, and on clear days they would climb to the bare
headland to the north of the house, and stand looking out to sea,
watching for Uncle Olaf with his ship, bringing home treasure untold.

To Ragna especially, Uncle Olaf was an embodiment of the spirit of
adventure and of the sea; he became in her imagination a sort of "Flying
Dutchman," doomed to sail forever and ever the Northern Seas, passing
the fjord and his old home in the whirling storm, doomed never to bring
his ship into port, never to rest in the haven where he fain would be.
She loved him, the tall, beautiful young sailor, with the waving fair
hair and deep-set blue eyes, and she imagined him amongst his
grey-bearded seamen,--they would grow old, but he, never. Some days when
she took her boat out in the open water, beyond the sheltering fjord,
she would imagine that far away against the dark horizon, against the
gathering storm-clouds, she saw the phantom vessel, flying before the
wind, all sails set, half veiled in the blowing scud. Her two sisters
would talk of when Uncle Olaf should come home, of the riches he would
bring, and the wonderful tales of adventure in far countries he would
tell, but only Ragna knew that he would never come, that his mysterious
doom was to sail on and on till the Judgment Day, longing for peace and
home, family and joy, but never to find them; seeing his comrades grow
old and grey, and die--but himself, always young, always stretching
longing arms toward the happiness and rest he might never attain to--and
so on and on for ever, till the end of the world.

Ragna, as you may see, was impulsive and visionary, and while her
sisters both became capable little housewives, she took but little
interest in homely duties. Eagerly she read whatever fell in her way,
but especially she loved the old Sagas, with their great fierce women,
and strong, terribly human men. She heard the call of the Valkyries in
the wind, saw their shapes in the battling clouds; the Aurora Borealis
to her, lighted the feasting of heroes in Valhalla. Naturally, she wrote
verses herself, but in secret, hiding her copy-book deep in her clothes
press. There her sister Lotte found it one fateful day, and produced it,
in a fit of childish mischief, after supper in the family circle. Poor
Ragna, all confusion and blushes, fearing the inevitable reprimand for
foolish waste of time, tried to snatch her darling, but the father held
up his hand.

"Give that book to me, Lotte," he said, and when she had complied, he
locked it up in his desk, and nothing further was said.

A week passed, and still Ragna trembled for the fate of her treasure,
but dared not inquire. She stood in awe of her father, and would as soon
have bearded a lion in his den, as question him. When he finally
summoned her to his study, and bade her close the door behind her, she
entered timidly, not daring to look him in the face. If he was secretly
amused by her air of conscious guilt, he gave no sign.

"My daughter," he said, in calm judicial tones, "your mother and I have
read the writings in the little book, the good grandmother also has seen
them. It is all nonsense, of course--what could a child like you write
but nonsense? But it is not such bad nonsense, after all," he added
kindly. Then he bade her sit by him, and she fetched a low stool, and
sat by his knee--up to now she had been standing as a dutiful child
should.

He laid his hand on her shining plaits of hair, and bent her head back
so that he might look into her eyes.

"True eyes," he said dreamily, half to himself, "Andersen eyes, and you
have the Andersen face, child. Lotte is of your mother's race, but
Ingeborg and you are Andersens through and through--and you look like
your Uncle Olaf." He paused awhile, apparently immersed in thought.
Ragna burned with excitement and curiosity, what could it mean? What
could he be going to say? Her head moved under his hand, and recalled to
him the fact of her presence.

"Ragna, your mother and I have decided that you must go away; you must
go to a school where you can learn more than is possible here. Fru
Bjork, a relative of your mother's, is taking her daughter to a convent
in Paris, and I have written to her asking her to take you also, and to
place you in the convent with Astrid. You are sixteen--two years in
Paris will do more for you than a lifetime here. The mother and I shall
miss you--but an Andersen must have the best, and I believe I can trust
you to make the most of this opportunity. Now, my child, I have said
what I had in my mind, there is nothing more, only this: remember always
that an Andersen must have the best and be worthy of it!"

Ragna had listened to him, her colour coming and going, her eyes
shining. Two years in Paris! It was too wonderful almost to be believed.
She rose from her stool, and made motion to kiss her father's hand, as
was her custom, but he took her into his arms, and kissed her forehead.

"You are too old now to kiss my hand," he said smiling. She flung her
arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing with excitement and joy,
till her father loosed her arms and putting her copy-book into her hand,
led to the door saying:

"There, there! Control yourself my dear, recollect that you are almost a
woman now!" And he closed the door behind her.




CHAPTER II


The next few weeks passed as in a dream, and at length the day of
departure came. Ragna set off with her father in the stulkjarre, her
modest box well corded and tied on behind. Grandmother, mother and
sisters, even the old nurse, waving a tearful farewell, disappeared
behind the clustering trees.

Travel in those days was not the easy affair it is now, and three days
posting lay between the travellers and Molde. They were to meet Fru
Bjork at Bergen. When, in due time they arrived, Ragna found her
chaperone to be a matronly woman, arrayed in brown silk with a heavy
gold chain round her neck; her crab's eyes looked good-naturedly out on
the world, and her ample curves bore witness to her naturally placid
temperament--relieved, however, by a surface fussiness. She at once took
Ragna to her arms and heart with such pattings and caressings as made
the girl feel quite uncomfortable, unused as she was to such a
demonstrative show of affection.

Astrid, the daughter, fair and pretty, sprightly and capricious of
character, also welcomed the newcomer with enthusiasm.

"How delightful it will be!" she carolled. "We shall be just like
sisters, and tell one another all our secrets--shan't we, dear?" She
linked her arm in Ragna's, and gazed soulfully into her face. Ragna
could not help wondering what secrets she might ever find it possible to
confide to such a little linnet. At first awkward and constrained, she
soon thawed, however, in the friendly atmosphere, and in a few minutes
was chattering away with a gaiety and freedom, quite surprising to her
father, who had always known her timidly reserved. This was not to be
wondered at, as he had never encouraged any other attitude in his
children.

As this is not to be a chronicle of a young lady's school-days, little
need be told concerning the journey to Paris, and the years at the Sacré
Coeur, suffice it to say that Ragna, under the care of the good
Sisters, improved both in mind and body. As her skin lost its coating of
sunburn and tan, and her body its abrupt and boyish movements, so her
mind, trained in the study of the French classics, took on polish, and
she acquired a nice discrimination of taste, and a distinction of manner
rarely met with in so young a girl. So much for externals, at heart she
was the same old Ragna, impulsive, dreamy, and of a childlike credulity,
splendidly loyal to those she loved. One instance of this will suffice.

Astrid, in whom vanity and the indulgence of her mother had developed a
thirst for admiration and romance, soon found the monotonous round of
convent life unbearably dull. She confided the yearnings of her lonely
heart to her bosom friend Ragna, and for a time these confidences, the
daily bulletins as to the state of her soul scribbled in pencil on
scraps of paper, and passed from one to the other as the girls met going
to and from chapel, or in recreation hours, sufficed.

Shortly after their arrival, they had been sent to separate dormitories
and tables, and kept apart during recreation, the Convent discipline not
permitting of too close an intimacy between two young girls, and there
being the added reason of the more rapid progress made in acquiring the
language when neither had the occasion to use her mother tongue.

Astrid considered it suitable to the arid state of her heart that she
should pine away, and to that end consumed bits of chalk from the
class-room blackboard, scrapings of slate pencils, and all the vinegar
within reach at meals. As may be imagined, she soon displayed an
interesting pallor, and was accordingly dosed with iron pills and quince
wine. Her heavy sighs and melancholy demeanour so impressed her fellow
pupils, that it was generally rumoured she was dying of a broken heart.
The broken heart soon mended, however, when early in the second year at
the convent, her discerning eye perceived the burning glances of a most
romantic looking youth. "Long hair, my dear, velveteen clothes, and the
most beautiful soulful eyes you ever saw," she told Ragna.

The girls were on their way, with a group of selected pupils under the
guardianship of an assistant mistress, to see a picture gallery. The
young man turned in behind the procession and followed. The next time it
was the same, and Astrid's romantic little soul thrilled at the thought
of so devoted an admirer. It was easy for the man to slip a folded note
into the girl's hand one day, as the little group straggled up the
stairway of the Louvre, and during the rest of the afternoon Astrid's
hand strayed constantly to her pocket to assure herself of the safety of
the precious paper. With eyelids lowered over shining eyes, she listened
to the droning explanations of the teacher, longing to be alone, to be
free to read the note.

This was the beginning of a correspondence, for Astrid answered the
letter and an obliging day-scholar posted the little envelope addressed
to M. Jules Gauthiez. So the two exchanged perfervid epistles, and
wrote such impassioned, if confused, outpourings, that Astrid's little
soul was consumed within her. The secret feeling of importance it gave
her betrayed itself in the brightness of her eyes and in the
self-consciousness of her voice and manner. The regimen of chalk and
vinegar fell into abeyance.

Ragna, at first amused, began to be alarmed at the situation; Astrid
keyed to the highest pitch of romantic sentimentality, was capable of
any folly, and the immediate consequences of discovery, public reprimand
and expulsion from the school, spelled unthinkable disaster to her more
serious mind. She begged Astrid to give the whole thing up, but the girl
would listen to no argument that her friend could put forward. "My love
is my life, can you ask me to tear my heart out?" she demanded.

The most Ragna could obtain, was that Astrid should be more
prudent--which meant exactly nothing.

Naturally, the Sisters could not long remain unobservant of the change
in Astrid's demeanour, and from awakened attention to discovery there
lay but a step.

Ragna was making a water colour drawing in the assembly room, when a
Sister brought her the order to go at once to the Reverend Mother. She
put by her brushes with trembling hands, and the black-robed Sister
observed her emotion curiously, but kindly.

"There, there, my child!" she said, "Reverend Mother will do you no
harm; she wishes to ask you a question, nothing more. If your conscience
is good, what do you fear?"

Ragna followed her without answering, her mind intent on the pending
interview.

The Superior's sitting-room was a comfortable apartment; a table stood
in the middle, and at one window a large writing desk. One of the walls
was occupied by a bookcase, another by a large carved _prie-dieu_ over
which hung an ivory crucifix and a silver holy-water stoup with its twig
of box.

Mother Marie Sacré Coeur, sat in a large carved armchair by the table.
She was a tall, slender woman, and her face, though unlined and delicate
as a piece of carved ivory, bore the imprint of long years of
responsibility, and conveyed the impression of a wonderful degree of
will power. It was not altogether an ascetic face, however, the grey
eyes, though keen, were human, and the strong firmly modelled mouth had
a humorous twist. The hands, long, slender and white with rather thick
thumbs, were lightly clasped over a Book of Hours bound in velvet and
silver.

By her side stood the Mère in charge of Astrid's dormitory, Mère
Perpétua, a severe, sour-looking woman, yellow under her white guimpe
and black veil. Astrid cowered beside her, looking like a prisoner in
the grasp of a gendarme; she had been crying, but her eyes had a furtive
expression and her weak, pretty mouth was set in obstinate lines. She
looked like a trapped animal, badly frightened, but feebly at bay. On
the table lay a little pile of crumpled papers, and the ribbon that had
bound them.

They all looked eagerly at Ragna as she entered, followed by Soeur
Angélique; she glanced at them each in turn, and from Astrid's eyes
caught such an agonized appeal for help that her back straightened, and
it was with a calm, almost defiant consciousness of definite purpose
that she met the Superior's interrogating gaze.

"Ragna," said the Reverend Mother, "we have called you here to ascertain
how much you know of this disgraceful affair. Mère Perpétua has found
these letters," she indicated the little heap on the table, "hidden in
Astrid's mattress. I have read them, they are letters such as no young
girl should receive from any man, even her fiancé. Our Rule has been
broken by this clandestine correspondence, and our sense of propriety
outraged; we are profoundly shocked and grieved."

"Such deceit! Such disgraceful effrontery! She brazenly denies they are
hers!" broke in Mère Perpétua, her lean face working.

"Silence!" cried the Superior. "Mère Perpétua, you forget yourself. I
had not desired you to speak." She paused a moment, then addressed
Ragna.

"You will tell us, my child, all that you know about this; it is your
duty to your companion, to us, and to yourself. On your frankness
depends to a large extent the punishment I shall deem it necessary to
impose; you may lighten it very appreciably, by telling the truth--but
if you hesitate, if I understand that you are withholding anything, it
will be the worse for both of you."

Mère Perpétua's interruption had been brief, but illuminating. Ragna
felt that her way was made clear, it was with a steady eye and a firm,
if slightly unnatural voice, that she answered:

"Reverend Mother, the letters are mine; I gave them to Astrid to keep
for me."

The effect was electrical. Astrid gasped and her jaw dropped; Mère
Perpétua stared at Ragna with the expression of one who has cherished a
viper in her bosom, and only just found it out. Soeur Angélique gave a
cry that was almost a sob. Ragna was her favourite, and she could have
wept with disappointment. Only the Superior showed no surprise; her
hands clasped the Book of Hours a little more tightly, and her keen eyes
fixed on Ragna's face seemed trying to penetrate her very soul, that was
all. Ragna returned her gaze without wavering.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Three months."

"Why did you not keep the letters yourself?"

"I was afraid of being found out!"

"Oh!" said the Reverend Mother, and laughed a little.

Her eyes went from Ragna, straight and proud, to Astrid, trembling
violently, and gazing anxiously at her friend.

"And did you answer the letters?"

"Yes."

"Who posted them for you?" Silence.

"Come, who posted them for you?"

"I will not tell," said Ragna. "I will tell anything that I have done
myself, but I refuse to tell on others--besides, the blame is mine in
any case."

The Superior nodded her head. "I shall not press the point now, we can
return to it later if need be. Are you aware of the result of this, of
what you have done? No punishment can be too severe for the girl who
deceives her friends and teachers so disgracefully, who sets so
deplorable an example to her fellow-pupils. What will your parents say
to this?"

Ragna went pale: "Oh Reverend Mother," she pleaded, "do anything to me
you like, but don't let them know of it! Oh, I know I have done wrong,
punish me as much as you please, but don't tell them!"

Astrid gathered herself together for a supreme effort; her cowardly
little soul, shamed by her friend's generosity, rose to her lips. With
tightly clasped hands, she stepped forward and began:

"Reverend Mother!"--but Ragna interrupted her quickly. She must do the
thing thoroughly or not at all; having put her hand to the plough, she
would not turn back.

"Reverend Mother, it has been very wrong of me, and I am sorry and
ashamed. Punish me however you like. I am to blame, but don't punish
Astrid, or hurt my parents; it is no fault of theirs."

The Superior laid her book on the table; her eyes, as she looked at
Ragna were full of kindly amusement, and also of respect.

"Soeur Angélique," she said, "take these girls to their dormitories,
and keep them till Benediction, afterwards I shall tell them what I have
decided upon."

As the door closed on the three, she turned to Mère Perpétua smiling.

"Well?" she said.

"What will you do with them, Reverend Mother? Shall they be publicly
expelled?"

"Ragna, as she has confessed, will be 'excused' from further walks
outside the Convent; Astrid, for having concealed the letters will be
kept at home also. You, ma Mère, will see that no word of this business
gets about among the girls--I wish no one to speak of it, _no one_."

Mère Perpétua was a study in pained amazement.

"What!" she burst forth. "No adequate punishment? Nothing to put that
brazen girl to shame for her indecent conduct? She stands here in your
presence and admits to having received the letters, and answered them,
to having corrupted her companion, as she might say: 'I have said thirty
Aves'! Oh Reverend Mother, you are too lenient! It is unjust!"

"So that is how you understand it, ma Mère? Has life taught you
nothing?"

"Life has taught me that sin requires punishment," she rejoined grimly.

"Ma Mère, I see that I must open your eyes; those letters were not
written to Ragna."

"Not written to her! Why she confessed that they were hers!"

"So she did, to save Astrid."

"Well, that only makes it worse, she has lied outrageously, and so has
Astrid--and you let them go unpunished!"

"I consider that Ragna's lie is a good lie, ma Mère. A generous lie is
better than a mean truth. I make a pretence of punishing her so that she
may not know I understand; vicarious punishment, if suffered
voluntarily, is good for the soul. As for Astrid, she is weak and
foolish, she has been thoroughly frightened, and is not likely to fall
again in the same direction--for the present at least. The sight of
Ragna, bearing the blame that should be hers, will do more for her than
any punishment you or I might inflict."

Mère Perpétua gazed at her Superior in amazement; though still
disapproving, she had a dim perception of the other's greatness of soul,
and the insight into human nature, that had made her, while still young
in years, the Head of the Community.

"You may go, ma Mère, and after Benediction you will bring our two black
sheep here."

So dismissed, Mère Perpétua took her departure, shaking her head.

The Superior remained alone, leaning her head on her hand. She thought
of the many young lives under her care, of the many girls she had seen
come and go. She thought of the many natures hopelessly warped by a
mistaken or untimely severity, shut in upon themselves, black-frosted,
as it were, in the very hour when they most need drawing out, training
and guiding by a sympathetic hand. She loved Ragna, her whole heart was
drawn to the girl in admiration for her generous assumption of the
other's fault. "She is too ready to take up others' burdens," she
thought; "God send that her own be not too heavy for her shoulders!"

The bell for Benediction interrupted her meditation. As she walked along
the passages to the Chapel the same thought pursued her, and when from
her carved stall she recognized Ragna's fair head, bowed among her
fellows, she seemed to see the halo of future suffering about it.

Ragna bending over her prayer-book, was wondering what the punishment
would be; and half defiantly she squared her shoulders to meet it. She
thought of Astrid, divided between contemptuous pity, and real sympathy
for the agonized fear displayed by the butterfly creature.

Astrid was sobbing her heart out, her face hid between her hands. She
despised herself for her weakness, and reproached herself for letting
Ragna take the blame. Later she would resent her friend's generosity,
but just now she fairly grovelled in self-abasement; she took a morbid
delight in mortifying herself in her own eyes, as formerly she had
exulted in the thought of her sentimental superiority over her comrades.

The level rays of sunlight tinged with the glory of Saints, touched the
rows of young heads, passing over some, distinguishing others, colouring
with purple and crimson the tresses, dark and fair, of the kneeling
girls, and the Chaplain holding aloft the Ostensory with its symbol of
the Great Sacrifice, glowed in a mystic radiance. Then the light went,
and the tapers on the altar twinkled like stars in the sudden twilight.

After the concluding hymns, Ragna and Astrid were again conducted to the
Superior's sitting-room, to hear her decision. The Reverend Mother had
chosen a good moment, for the service of Benediction had had its effect
on the impressionable girlish natures. Ragna was softened, and Astrid
had found moral courage enough to overcome her selfish fear.

The Reverend Mother at once saw the change and profited by it, so that
almost without their knowing it, she had soon drawn a full confession
from both girls. Astrid, once fairly started, and prone as ever to
exaggeration, would have known no limits to her self-abasement,
luxuriating in her confession of guilt, had she not been almost sternly
controlled and restrained.

Ragna, though pleased and relieved by Astrid's assumption of the
misdoing, was yet secretly disappointed in surrendering her role of
self-immolated victim. She would not have owned it to herself, she did
not even recognize the flat feeling of generous effort rendered useless,
that chilled her. Quite unconsciously she had been admiring her action.
How much self-sacrifice would there be in the world, if the self-made
victim were not secretly upheld by the nobility of the pose--even if
self be the sole admirer? There is, in every action, not the result of
passionate impulse, a certain amount of play to the gallery, even though
the gallery be only what is commonly known as conscience.

The Superior, being a wise woman, was neither too severe nor the
reverse; she improved the occasion by giving the girls a lecture which
they neither of them forgot, and dismissed them with a punishment
sufficient to keep the matter in their minds for some time, while giving
them no reason for considering themselves martyrs to discipline.

So the incident ended, and it had the effect of drawing the girls closer
together, for Astrid, having vindicated her own self-respect, could
appreciate Ragna's generosity and forgive it, while Ragna loved her
friend the better for having assumed the role of protector to her, and
could love her the more, not being obliged to despise her for
cowardice.




CHAPTER III


So the time passed and the end of the second year came; Astrid was to
remain at the Convent another twelve-month, but Ragna must return home.

With tears in her eyes she packed her boxes and took leave of the
Sisters and her companions. She had begged in vain for another
year--even six months, but her father was obdurate. He had made
arrangements with a friend of his, a sea-captain, to fetch her in Paris
and take her to Norway in his vessel. All was decided and Ragna must go.

She felt a strange shrinking from the journey and in later days came to
regard as a premonition what was probably only reluctance to face the
busy outside world after so many months of seclusion. Certain it is that
with heavy heart and red eyes she left the Convent, and Captain Petersen
was much concerned by the dolorous appearance of his charge.

"You look more like a virgin martyr being led to the stake than a pretty
young lady just let out of her cage into the world!" he told her. "Bless
my soul, if I wouldn't want to shake a loose leg after being mewed up so
long!"

He was a stout, red-faced man with merry blue eyes, and a red fringe of
beard round his face like a misplaced halo. There was nothing saintly
about him, however, though he was a thoroughly good and honest man.

"Cheer up!" he adjured Ragna, "the sea-breezes will soon blow the
cobwebs out of your brain and the colour into your cheeks--besides," he
added with a jovial wink, "I've a surprise up my sleeve for you--a
surprise most young ladies would give their eyes for!"

"What is it?" she asked for politeness' sake.

"It will keep! It will keep!" he answered delightedly.

He enlivened the long railway journey to the best of his ability, with a
constant stream of jokes and stories at which he chuckled heartily in
default of a more appreciative audience. He plied the girl with sweets
and fruit, little flasks of wine and biscuits. He was so unfailing in
his good-humoured and kindly attentions that she could not help but
respond and presently was laughing with him as merrily as possible. He
insisted on calling her "Fröken" pretending to stand in great awe of her
long skirts, chignon and "young-ladyfied" manners. He teased her by
constant references to his "surprise," but refused to tell her of what
it consisted, so that her curiosity was thoroughly aroused and her
eagerness to penetrate the mystery was only equalled by his pleasure at
the success of his diplomacy.

So they journeyed to Hamburg, and Ragna forgot to regret her
convent-life in the whirl of new sights and sensations. Captain Petersen
found time, in spite of his other occupations, to take her boating up
the Alster and to the theatre. She slept in her cabin, on the small
steamer, and amused herself when the Captain was busy, by wandering
through the city, visiting the market-place, the churches, or on the
harbour and river in the small steamboats plying ceaselessly to and fro.

The _Norje_ was to sail four days after their arrival in Hamburg. Much
preparation was being made on board, unusual, even to Ragna's
unaccustomed eyes--the state-rooms were being freshened and made ready,
and the steward was laying in stores of chickens, fruit and other
delicacies. Evidently some distinguished passengers were expected.

At last the day came, the sailing was fixed for noon, and Captain
Petersen, watch in hand, stood on deck, by the gangway, looking
expectantly up the wharf. Ragna, sitting aft under the awning, a book in
her hand, could not keep her eyes from straying in the same direction,
though she did her best to disguise her curiosity, for Captain Petersen,
true to his word, had remained adamant to her enquiries and coaxings,
and she wished him now to believe that she did not care so very much for
his old "surprise" after all. Hence the book and the carefully detached
attitude.

Down on the wharf there was a slight commotion; two carriages had
stopped, and servants and porters were hastening to and fro. Ragna saw a
young man step from the first carriage, followed by another man,
slightly older. Both had the military bearing and both were handsome,
but the first had the air of one accustomed to precedence, and his
somewhat petulant orders and gestures found instant response and
acquiescence on the part of his companion. They were too far away for
Ragna to catch their speech, though the sound of their voices reached
her, and she wondered what language they might be using; Norwegian was
out of the question; Swedish and Danish equally so; German it could not
be for their appearance was anything but German--but neither did they
look like Englishmen nor Frenchmen nor Russians, nor in fact anyone she
had ever seen.

Meanwhile Captain Petersen had hastened down the gang-plank and cap in
hand was bowing clumsily to the younger man and escorting him
deferentially to the ship. As they passed up the gang-plank to the deck,
the young man raised his head and his eyes met Ragna's, as leaning over
the rail quite forgetful of herself, in her interested surmising, she
gazed down at him. Her hat, tipped back and only held by the dark blue
ribbon tied under her chin, left her hair uncovered, and the mass of
gleaming braids and curls caught and reflected the sunlight; her blue
eyes shaded by dark lashes looked down from out the shadow of her hair,
clear, wondering and free from self-consciousness; her mouth, rather
large but well-shaped and red as that of a child, too red for the
Scandinavian fairness of her skin, was smiling, the lips just parted.

So their eyes met, his, large, dark, burning, different from any she had
ever seen, held hers a moment, then he raised his hat and passed on, as
Ragna withdrew, a flush she could not understand rising in her cheeks.
One moment only, but while his eyes held hers she had felt a curious
sensation, a sort of magnetic thrill drawing her to him, and as long as
he looked at her she could not have withdrawn her eyes, nor lowered her
lids.

It had lasted but a second, but that second, though she did not know it,
was the turning point of her life.

Captain Petersen, preceding the young man had seen nothing, he was still
murmuring disconnected phrases of greeting--"Most highly honoured! Such
condescension! Entirely at Your Highness's disposal." As they reached
the deck, the Captain stood aside to give passage to "His Highness"
disclosing to view the deck, with Ragna who had retreated to a chair at
some distance, and as His Highness stepped to the deck, his eyes
followed the Captain's to the girl; then he raised them in inquiry to
Petersen's face. The latter with a sweeping gesture and a voice
unconsciously raised to quarter-deck tones answered the unspoken
question.

"A fellow-passenger, Your Highness, the daughter of an old friend who I
am bringing back from school. She speaks French like a Russian--Will
Your Highness permit?" His Highness graciously permitted and they walked
over to Ragna who rose to her feet annoyed by the blushes which came in
spite of her, under the young stranger's scrutiny. Captain Petersen
chuckling at her embarrassment addressed her in his genial roar:

"Ragna, His Royal Highness, Prince Mirko of Montegria has permitted me
to present you, and I make you responsible for his entertainment during
the trip. Didn't I tell you I had a surprise for you that would take
your breath away? You can begin at once; I'm no carpet-knight, and
managing this ship is about enough for me. Her name is Andersen, Your
Highness, Fröken Ragna Andersen--and with your kind permission--"
someone hailed him and he bustled away.

The servants were coming on board, directing the stewards with the
luggage and the Prince's companion had already gone below to arrange the
details of the installation.

Ragna had made her curtsey and stood in silent embarrassment until
Prince Mirko broke the ice by saying smilingly:

"A kind Fate evidently presides over my destiny--but Captain Petersen
was wrong in preparing you for a surprise; he should have warned me of
the pleasure in store for me."

Then seeing how unsophisticated the girl was, and that his
complimentary phrase only added to her confusion, he put her quite at
her ease by making an ordinary remark or two about the weather, followed
by a few questions as to her life in the Convent and the journey to
Hamburg. They were still talking, standing by the rail, when the young
man who had accompanied Prince Mirko in the carriage, approached and
stopped within a few paces of them.

"Oh," said the Prince, "Mademoiselle, let me present my friend and
aide-de-camp, Count Angelescu. What is it, Otto?"

"Captain Petersen wishes to know if Your Highness will have luncheon
served in your state-room, or if you will eat in the saloon. There are
no other passengers beside your party and this young lady."

"The saloon, by all means, Otto, and tell the Captain I hope he will
join us, as well as Mademoiselle, if she will do us the honour!"--He
looked at Ragna who bowed.

Count Angelescu also bowed and withdrew--he had bowed to Ragna, bringing
his heels together with a click, when his Prince presented him, but had
seemed to give her no further attention. In reality he had observed her
closely and her frank expression and fresh youthfulness pleased him.
Ragna's impression of him was equally favourable; she liked his bronzed
soldierly face, with the grave eyes and the firm mouth under the dark
moustache. He must be thirty or over, she thought, the Prince could not
be more than twenty-four or five.

The sailors had lowered the gang-plank and were casting off the hawsers
which held the steamer to the wharf. A wheezy donkey-engine was lowering
boxes and bales through the forward hatch; on the river side a small
puffing tug was slowly warping the _Norje_ into midstream. Ragna and
the Prince could hear Captain Petersen on the bridge, now calling orders
through the tube to the engine room, now bawling through his
speaking-trumpet. His round face looked like an overgrown peony and
Ragna said so, to her companion's amusement.

"Is that the botany they teach you in Paris?" he asked.

"Oh," she answered, laughing gayly, "Paris is a place where one learns
many things!"

"Even in a Convent?"

"Even in a Convent."

He shot a stealthy glance at her from under dropped lids--the girl was
thoroughly innocent, there could be no doubt as to that. A smile
twitched his moustache--the things Paris had taught him were not
subjects usually included in the curriculum of a girls' school, and the
piquancy of the contrast between his experience of _la Villa Lumière_
and that of Ragna amused him. He stood idly watching her--her face
interested him, not from its prettiness alone--she was at the same time
more and less than pretty. It was no doll's face, the cheek-bones were
too high and prominent for the canons of perfect beauty, the mouth too
large and the forehead too high, but there was an indescribable charm he
did not seek to analyse--enough that it should be perceptible. He felt
instinctively that though childlike in her mind Ragna was no fool, and
that it would amuse him to draw her out. So he led her on to express her
opinions on various subjects grave and gay, such as came up in their
desultory conversation.

The announcement of luncheon, by means of a cracked gong, was no
interruption for the Captain excused himself on the ground that his
presence was required on the bridge, and Count Angelescu barely joined
in the conversation from time to time in response to a direct appeal
from the Prince or from Ragna.

The girl had lost all trace of shyness and was enjoying herself heartily
in the highest of spirits, and Prince Mirko seemed more like a
school-boy on a holiday than the heir to a kingdom on a diplomatic
mission. He explained to Ragna that he was on his way to Stockholm, and
from there to St. Petersburg.

"But," he said, "that is all so appallingly serious that I am cutting
capers while I may--I often cut them when I should not, don't I, Otto?
And old 'Long face' there, tries to keep me in order; old 'Long face'
does not approve of me now!" he laughed.

Count Angelescu did not reply, nor did he even smile at the sally; he
was not at all pleased by the rate at which the _camaraderie_ between
the Prince and Ragna was progressing. He knew his Prince for a "coureur
de cotillons" and scented danger from afar. "Fortunately we land the day
after to-morrow," he thought. Two days is a short time, but much can
happen in them.

Ragna had listened, astonished by the bantering challenge.

"Why," she exclaimed, "Your Highness, can you be kept in order?"

The naïve question so pleased the Prince that he roared with laughter,
as did also Count Angelescu who answered her.

"No, Mademoiselle, he can't, and that's the worst of it! I do my best;
it's no use; I advise you to beware of him, he's dangerous."

"Now, Otto, none of that! I won't have you making me out an ogre. I
assure you," he said, turning to Ragna, "that I am warranted neither to
bite nor scratch. Do I really look terrible?"

"No, indeed," she laughed, looking him in the eyes, "I am not afraid of
you!"

"Ah, Mademoiselle," said Angelescu, "it is when one thinks one's self
safest that one is generally in the greatest danger. I was never so sure
of myself as the day I fell hopelessly in love; I had the folly to think
myself woman-proof, you see, and I fell!"

"So you are married, then," said Ragna.

"No, for after all she would have none of me!"

They all joined in a laugh at this, and Ragna said: "Your sermon loses
its point, oh Preacher!"

So the luncheon-hour passed amid jest and laughter and they strolled out
to the deck where comfortable chairs awaited them under the canvas
awning. The _Norje_ was passing the islands of the Elbe--the Vierländer,
and Prince Mirko made much fun of the quaint dress of the peasant women
with their awkward hats, stiff ribbons and clumsy petticoats.

Ragna described to him the dress of the women about her home, and was
led on to talk of the many ancient customs of the country people, now
fallen into disuse, such as the duel with daggers, both men bound
together with the same leather belt, and of other contests, bloodless
ones these, when two or more men vied with each other in improvising
verse, often carrying it on far into the night. She told of the
bear-hunts, of the strange tales of returning whalers, of her Uncle Olaf
and his phantom ship, and of her fancy of seeing him in the storm.

As she talked, the men smoked; Count Angelescu watched her, charmed by
her fresh young voice and the expressive play of her features. He
thought to himself: "No, my dear friend this is no game for you. St.
Petersburg will furnish you with adversaries worthy of your steel, save
your efforts for them--this little girl is too good for you," and he
made up his mind not to leave the Prince alone with Ragna, more than was
unavoidable. Speaking to the Prince himself would do no good, very
possibly it might put ideas into his head that he had not heretofore
consciously entertained--or might crystallize the mere intent to please
into obstinate purpose of conquest. Angelescu was thoroughly determined
in his own mind that no harm should come to Ragna which he could
prevent.

Prince Mirko, on his part, was listening to her chatter, the picture of
lazy enjoyment, his graceful figure reclining easily in his deck-chair.
He played with his cigarette while watching her with narrowed eyes. He
noted the graceful poise of her head, the gleam of her heavy hair, the
fresh colour coming and going under her transparent skin, the rounded
contours of her slender figure, but it was her mouth that fascinated him
most, sinuous, sensitive and red--too red.

"Good Lord," he reflected, "what a temperament the girl must have! I
wonder what kind of a man will get her? Her husband--or lover, will be a
lucky man. I shouldn't object myself, to playing Pygmalion to her
Galatea." He fell to imagining what she would be like when the crude
innocence of her eyes should give way to a depth of passionate feeling,
when the barely perceptible circles under them should widen and darken,
and her mouth--that luscious, voluptuous, childish mouth should take a
man's kisses and return them. He thrilled at the thought, then pulled
himself together ashamed at the direction his thoughts had taken. "You
fool," he said to himself, "can't you leave that child alone? I really
believe Otto was not far wrong in warning her against me--I'll show him
he's wrong though, I'm not as bad as that! I may be a bit of a Don Juan,
but I'm not a _mangeur de petits enfants_!"

He rose to throw his cigarette-butt over the side and lighting a fresh
one strolled up and down the deck, watching the shores slip by.

Captain Petersen at that moment joined them and his presence amalgamated
the discordant unities of the group. Ragna had felt, without
understanding it, a sort of moral tension during the last few moments,
and though the Prince's abrupt rising had relieved it, there persisted
an uncomfortable undercurrent of conflicting influences. Captain
Petersen's cheery red face and jovial manner came like a rush of fresh
air into an overheated room. He indicated the various points of interest
as they steamed by and regretted that they would pass Heligoland after
dark.

"If it keeps clear, we shall see it by moonlight though," he promised
them.

Ragna sought her cabin early on the plea of getting ready for dinner,
and contrary to her custom spent much time over her toilette, trying her
hair this way and that, and passing in review her not too extensive
wardrobe. She had awakened to a sense of coquetry; she was newly
conscious of a deliberate desire to please.

When she had finished she viewed with dissatisfaction the image her
glass reflected: her hair seemed to her much too formal and
school-girlish in its arrangement, yet had she known it, the severe
lines of burnished plaits suited her small, well-shaped head and the
crude youthful curves of face and slender neck far better than any more
elaborate style. Her dark-blue frock opening in a point at the throat
and leaving the fore-arms bare, seemed suddenly to her newborn critical
sense too childish and plain--and again it suited her perfectly,
throwing into relief the whiteness of her skin and the fairness of her
hair, the lack of frill and furbelow emphasizing the slender waist and
the rounded slimness of hip and breast. And she longed for trained
ringlets and lace flounces.

Dinner was not as pleasant a meal, she thought, as luncheon; the Prince
was silent, almost moody, and conversation languished.

Count Angelescu, quick to perceive the change in his Prince's manner,
and as quickly guessing the cause, did his best to second so worthy a
resolve by making an effort to keep up a conversation on indifferent
topics and to engage Ragna's attention and interest. He was not much of
a conversationalist, however, and quite unused to the society of young
girls. In his part of the world girls were rarely, if ever, seen in
society and the stories and small talk adapted to the married women of
his acquaintance were certainly not of a type suited to present
circumstances.

Ragna was disappointed; she took the Prince's bad humour for a touch of
hauteur and suspected him of regretting having unbent in her society. So
piqued and hurt she made no effort to second Angelescu's efforts. She
ate little and refused wine until champagne was brought and Prince Mirko
insisted upon filling her glass. He had been secretly amused by his
aide's laborious attempts at entertainment and Ragna's very evident
chagrin at his aloofness flattered his vanity. In spite of his
resolution to maintain a barrier of formality between them he could not
resist the temptation of making her face resume its former sunny
expression. Raising his glass in which the bubbles were winking merrily
he said: "Let us drink, Otto, to the health of Mademoiselle, who has
turned the desert of a Norwegian ship into a garden for us!"

Ragna looked up, blushing and smiling; they both touched their glasses
to hers and drank.

"Now Mademoiselle, you must answer the toast!"

"I? Oh, never!" she cried in confusion. "I have never answered a toast
in my life. I don't know how!" Then recovering herself, "You may answer
it for me if you like."

"Shall I?" he asked. "Very well then, I rise, lady and gentleman--no I
don't, I sit down," as a lurch of the ship threw him back into his chair
and spilt half the contents of his glass--"I sit then, as the elements
won't permit of my standing, to thank you for the toast just drunk, and
to propose in return our newborn friendship!"

They all drank to that.

"There," said Mirko, "that is better; we have set the seal on our
present relation. The Present with a capital P. is always the best life
has to offer. Yesterday is dead and to-morrow is in darkness: to-day
only we live. _Carpe diem_ was the motto of the Ancients and it is
mine!"

"Oh, no, not of all the Ancients," objected Ragna quickly, horrified at
the Pagan irresponsibility of the thought, "the Stoics did not live for
the pleasure of the hour, they taught themselves to forego pleasure. I
think it is nobler to deny one's self," she added timidly.

"Deny one's self? What for?" demanded the Prince. "Why should I deny
myself anything for the sake of others' pleasure? Am I not as good as
they? And besides if I deny myself it only makes them selfish. To be
really altruistic I should indulge myself on every occasion with the
object of cultivating a beautiful unselfishness in others--that would be
true self-sacrifice"--He stopped, laughing at the extreme bewilderment
of the girl's face. She had lived entirely among serious-minded people,
devoid of a sense of humour, and was unused to hear what were, to her,
serious matters bandied about as subjects for jest; she rejoined
gravely:

"You say, 'live only for the day,' but there is a to-morrow--someone
must always bear the consequences, it can't keep on being just 'to-day'
however much we may wish it."

The remark was characteristic of her, and she was one on whom life's
to-morrows would fall heavily. Angelescu came to her assistance.

"Mademoiselle refuses to accept the sophistry of Your Highness's
arguments," he said smiling. "Sophistry, why it is the simple truth, and
the Epicureans are your true Stoics. _Carpe diem!_ Let us drink to
_carpe diem_!"

"Not I," said Ragna.

"Very well then, Mademoiselle la Stoique--but I shall make it my
business to convert you. Let us then drink to the health of our noble
selves. What do you say, in Norwegian, when you drink a health?"

"Skaal," said Ragna.

"Skaal, then," said both men raising their glasses and looking at Ragna,
who half timidly raised hers to her lips, then put it down again--and
Prince Mirko added under his breath as he drained his glass,

"And to your conversion, my dear."

On deck, a fresh breeze was blowing, and Ragna bound a long scarf over
her head and wrapped her travelling-cloak well about her. Accompanied
by the two men she paced briskly up and down the deck inhaling joyfully
the strong sea air.

"Let us try the other side," she said presently, and they turned forward
of the wheel-house: At the turn the wind caught the long ends of her
scarf and wound them about the Prince's neck; they paused to disentangle
the soft silken thing, Prince Mirko's hands delaying rather than
hastening the process, when a lurch of the vessel flung Ragna against
him. He steadied himself with one arm against the deck-house and with
the other supported the girl, holding her firm young body close to his.
He held her but a moment more than was needful, but in that moment,
pressed close to him, his moustache brushing her cheek, she felt a
repetition of the same thrill, half attraction, half fear, which had
come over her the first time their eyes met. It was over in an instant
and they were running down the deck before the wind, but Ragna felt a
new and strange constraint upon her which did not wear off as the
evening advanced.

She waited up long enough to see Heligoland rising up dark and
forbidding on the starboard side in the half-light of the moon. The
cloud-wrack behind, seemed like the wings of some monster bird of prey
about to swoop down upon the island, crouching to repel the attack. As
she watched, a cloud passed over the moon and a jagged line of lightning
cleft the darkening mass on the horizon. The flash lasted but the
fraction of a second, but she had seen a ship carrying full sail
silhouetted against the storm-cloud. The ship stood out for an instant
in wonderful relief, every spar and rope clear-cut against the sombre
background, then was swallowed up into the night.

"It is Uncle Olaf," thought Ragna. "He has come to warn me--but of
what?"

She turned to Angelescu, leaning on the rail beside her.

"Did you see the ship?"

"The ship! What ship? When?"

"Just over there, against that black cloud in the lightning flash."

As she spoke the lightning flared again but revealed nothing.

"You see there is no ship, Mademoiselle," said Angelescu, "and landsman
though I be, I know that she would show some lights if she were there."

"Then," said Ragna in a low voice, "the sign is not for you--it was the
ship of my Uncle Olaf."

"What are you talking about so earnestly?" asked Prince Mirko, joining
them. He had been lighting a cigarette in the shelter of the
companion-way. His tone was suspicious, he thought that Angelescu might
have been warning the girl against him. The mere fact that he suspected
such a contingency and resented it, was proof patent that his good
resolution of the afternoon had fallen into abeyance.

During the brief moment when he had held her in his arms, had felt her
heart beating under his hand and the stray locks of her hair blowing
across his face, his pulse had given a leap, and had it not been for
Angelescu's restraining presence, he would have kissed her.

Angelescu hastened to reassure him:

"Mademoiselle has seen the phantom ship of her phantom uncle--I have
not, which proves that my spiritual vision is defective."

Ragna laughed.

"Should I be able to see your family ghost, I wonder?" she queried.

"What makes you think I have a family ghost, Mademoiselle?"

"Everyone has them--you, the Prince--oh, everyone!"

"If you mean a private, particular ghost, Mademoiselle, every man or
woman has one after a certain age. Sometimes it is the ghost of the 'has
been,' sometimes of the 'what might have been,' and sometimes of both.
But you are too young for that sort of ghost--and I pray you may never
have a worse one than your Uncle Olaf's."

"Oh, stow all that nonsense about ghosts," said the Prince testily. "Why
should you fill up a poor girl's head with that sort of thing? Will you
not walk again, Mademoiselle, and let the wind blow all these cobwebs
away?"

But Ragna refused; it was late, she said, four bells had just struck,
and it was time for bed. The men strolled over to the companion-way with
her and each kissed her hand. Angelescu brushed it respectfully with his
moustache, but the Prince set his lips upon it and the burning seal of
his mouth sent a current through her veins. She snatched her hand away
and fled to her cabin.

The men walked slowly up and down the lee-side of the deck, the swinging
lamp grotesquely lengthening and broadening their shadows as they passed
under its feeble ray.

"Otto," said the Prince suddenly, "what do you think of the girl? Is she
as innocent as she appears?"

"I think," rejoined Angelescu, weighing every word, "that she is
entirely too good a girl to play with and fling away. Anyone can see
that she is nothing but a child at heart, and a man who can't marry her
has no business to wake her up."

"Which means me? Well, calm yourself, good Otto, calm yourself, the fair
maiden runs no danger that I know of. I have no foul intentions on her
virtue! A little fun does no one any harm--What makes you such an old
fogy any way, damn you? I don't recognize you in the role of St.
Anthony, nor myself either for the matter of that!" he chuckled
reminiscently.

"Your Highness knows," answered Angelescu, "that I am no saint, and I
don't mind a bit of a game myself, when there is any sport in it, but in
this case it would be entirely too one-sided. Wait till you find someone
who knows the rules of the game--there's no glory in turning the heads
of boarding-school misses!" He puffed disgustedly at his cigarette which
had gone out, then threw it away and thrust his hands into his pockets.

"You're right, old man; that's the worst of you, fidus Achates, you're
always right in the main--but I think this time you are just a little
bit off the track. Have I not already declared my intention of
respecting virtuous innocence? What more would you have? And if I throw
in a lesson or two, just a kindergarten lesson in the gentle art of
flirtation, what harm is there?"

Angelescu shrugged his shoulders and moved away. He knew better than to
prolong a useless discussion, and he knew equally well from experience
what the Prince might consider as legitimately included in his
"kindergarten of flirtation." Judging from his own impression of Ragna
and of the capabilities of her temperament once aroused, he realized
the danger to her peace of mind which would inevitably follow the merest
spark of sense awakening. "There would be the devil to pay," he thought
and as before reflected that fortunately the time was short.




CHAPTER IV


Ragna, tired out by the long day of new experience, soon fell asleep in
her narrow berth. It seemed to her that after a long sleep of which she
was dimly conscious she awoke to find herself in a strange country, a
wide grass-covered plain running to the foot of low mountains, a rolling
plain extending right and left as far as the eye could reach. The sky
was heavy with thunder clouds, and against the dark heavens and the
grassy knolls and bottoms ran a series of arches--white arches, some
broken, some still whole and joined one to the other like an
interminable bridge. She was no longer a girl but a hare, running
bounding along, and after her ran a greyhound the fleetest of his kind,
following her in long easy leaps. It seemed to her that though she was
the hare, yet it was as if she stood at a distance and watched the
chase, saw the anguished turning and doubling of the hare, saw the
greyhound ever nearer and nearer, about to overtake his prey. At last
the storm broke, and amid the wild lightnings and the crashing thunder,
the end came--one last despairing bound, and Ragna, the hare, felt the
pursuer's teeth close in her panting side. With a shriek she sat up in
her berth. Above, the sailors were holy-stoning the deck, and the cabin
was as she had seen it the night before, her clothes swaying to the
motion from the hooks on the wall where she had hung them. Now and again
a green wave washed over the closed port-hole.

She flung herself back on her pillow. Drops of perspiration beaded her
forehead, and in spite of her wish to laugh at the relief of finding her
dream only a dream after all, she was still dominated by the mysterious
anguish with which the dream had filled her. Thinking it over, she
shuddered and had need to feel the stuff curtain of her berth to assure
herself that she was really awake. She looked at her watch; it was not
yet six o'clock, but accustomed to the early rising at the Convent, she
felt it impossible to fall asleep again, so she rose and performed her
toilette, amused by the difficulty of dressing on a floor which swung up
and down under her feet sending her staggering to and fro like a drunken
man.

In the deserted saloon a steward brought her zwieback and coffee, and
after she had eaten she went on deck carrying a handful of bread with
which to feed the gulls. She was standing in the stern, looking out over
the narrowing foamy wake, and throwing the bits of crust to the hungry
birds, watching them wheel and plunge and seize the tempting morsel,
while those who caught nothing vented their displeasure in angry
squawks, when Captain Petersen joined her. He slyly stole up behind her
and pinched her rosy cheek with a "Hey, now, what's our young lady doing
about so early? Stealing bread, too! Dear, dear that will never do!"

Ragna turned laughing to meet the mock reproof.

"Well, what do you think of the old man now? Haven't I managed to give
you pleasant company for the voyage, little one? A real prince, too, not
many would have pulled that off for you! And you know how to keep him
entertained!"

He shook his finger at her.

"Don't think that because I was cooped up on the bridge all day, I
didn't see anything that was going on, Miss Sly-boots!"

He laughed uproariously, and Ragna glanced apprehensively back over the
deck to assure herself that no one was within hearing.

"What did you see, Captain Petersen?" she asked. "I am sure there was
nothing extraordinary, and it was you who asked me to entertain His
Highness!"

"So I did," roared the Captain, "so I did, and the little Minx must
needs set her cap at him as well--and capture him, horse, guns and foot!
A little lass just out of a convent at that!"

Ragna was much embarrassed by this well-meaning banter, and in terror
lest he should revive the subject in the Prince's presence--if that were
to happen she would surely die of shame! "Captain Petersen," she said,
"I have never set my cap at anyone, please don't say such things! The
Prince is very kind to take any notice of a little girl like me, and he
must find me very simple after the ladies he sees in society. Do be
good, Captain Petersen, don't tease me again please, I don't like it! I
think I will go down now and write some letters and my diary."

Captain Petersen shook with laughter.

"And so it is a child and not a young lady at all, in spite of its long
skirts, and _it_ doesn't like to be teased about Princes--and _it_
thinks it will run away and write to be rid of me!"

Then as he saw tears of vexation rise in Ragna's eyes he realized that
he had gone too far and like the gentleman he was, hastened to
apologize.

"There, there, my dear, forgive an old sea-dog his joke! I meant nothing
by it, but if you don't like it we won't say any more. I may be a bit
rough and ready, my dear, and I'm not used to turning compliments and
dancing on carpets, but I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

"I'm sure you wouldn't, Captain," said Ragna, laying her hand on his
blue sleeve and smiling up into his kindly eyes. They stood there a few
minutes longer watching the cloud of whirling white and grey gulls, and
Ragna threw her last crumbs of bread; then they walked forward and the
girl went to the saloon to write her letters, while the Captain returned
to the bridge.

In the saloon she found Angelescu just finishing his breakfast. He rose,
serviette in hand, as she entered.

"You are up early, Mademoiselle!"

"Oh," she answered, "I have been up for hours; I have been on deck
feeding the gulls."

"And now you are going to have some breakfast? Let me call the steward."

"Thank you, Monsieur, I breakfasted before I went on deck. I have come
down to write a little. Please don't let me interrupt your breakfast."

As she spoke, she moved over to a small table set across the end of the
saloon, and laid upon it her writing case and travelling inkstand.

Angelescu resumed his seat and silence reigned except for the usual
noises of the ship and the scratching of Ragna's pen.

The Count having finished his repast went on deck, where he was hailed
by Captain Petersen and invited to the bridge, where the good Captain
set forth at some length the principles of navigation, and enjoyed
himself thoroughly, not often having had the fortune to meet with so
considerate a listener; for the Count, though more bored than otherwise
by the Captain's disquisition, sprinkled as it was by innumerable
technical details, maintained throughout an air of courteous interest.
So delighted was Captain Petersen that he actually sent for his private
bottle of "schnapps" and insisted on his visitor's partaking thereof to
close the interview.

Ragna had settled herself on deck with a rug and a book, and evidently
expected Count Angelescu to join her as he descended from the bridge,
but he only bowed--it seemed that he also had some writing to do. Much
as he felt inclined to sit down by her, he realized that after what had
passed between him and the Prince, it would not be wise for him to
appear to devote more time or attention to her than courtesy required.
And moreover he felt that it would not be easy for him to remain too
long alone with Ragna without falling to a certain extent victim to the
charm which she unquestionably exerted.

Ragna therefore spent the long morning between her book and short
constitutionals up and down the deck. Part of the time she lay lazily
watching the changing cloud shapes, the spray dashing up to catch the
sunlight and falling again like a shower of diamonds, the ceaseless
march onward of the white crested waves. Leaning on the rail, she
followed the churning lines of foam, swirling deep down in the marble
like water and rising again to the surface in a lacy pattern of tiny
bubbles.

So the time passed until shortly after eleven the Prince appeared
followed by Angelescu. They drew up chairs, and after the first
salutations were over, Ragna bantered the Prince on his late rising.

"Ah, but my dear young lady," he answered, "you do not know the night I
spent. In the first place, your charming image held sleep at bay for
hours, and then a less romantic reason kept me awake. My bed was made
like a jam-roll, and it did roll--it rolled off three times, and each
time I had to get up and put it back."

Ragna laughed; the Norwegian fashion of bed making was one to which she
was well accustomed and she had never thought of the effect it might
have on a stranger.

"Ah, you may well laugh," continued Mirko, "but if you had seen me
taming that wild beast of a bed, and at the same time trying to keep my
balance on that see-saw floor you would have wept tears of compassion."

"Crocodile tears, I fear," said Angelescu drily.

"Then they began holy-stoning the deck just as I had fallen asleep, and
I had to begin all over again. I am convinced, Mademoiselle, that I was
not born to sail the seas!"

Ragna laughed and sparkled; in the clear morning light, the vague
distrust and fear of him, which had assailed her the evening before,
seemed a ridiculous trick of the imagination and of a piece with her
foolish dream. The man was simple, gay and straightforward enough now,
in all conscience! His eyes, whose magnetic power had so troubled her
the day before, now reflected nothing but merry good humour, as he gave
his whimsical account of his night's experiences. He rattled along in a
cheerful way, making them all laugh at his nonsense and merry conceits.

Captain Petersen lunched with the party, his jolly red face beaming like
a rising sun. Ragna thought she had never laughed so much in all her
life. When they had finished she fed the gulls again with the help of
the Prince and Angelescu, who vied with each other in seeing who could
toss the crumbs farthest. One large gull, an old white fellow, either
stronger or more masterful than the others, was getting more than his
share; he would wait until another bird had caught a crumb and would
then bear down on him, wings spread, legs extended, and with wild
squawks oblige the poor thing to drop the coveted morsel, whereupon he
would pounce upon it and devour it, only to begin all over again. Ragna
pointed him out to the men and the Prince nicknamed him "Napoleon."

It was very pleasant there in the stern. Ragna seated herself on a coil
of rope in the shadow of a life-boat, and the men leaned lazily on the
rail watching the exploits of "Napoleon." Angelescu had always a certain
soldierly stiffness about him from his clear-cut face to his trim feet,
suggestive of an uncompromising attitude of mind where honour or
principle were involved. Prince Mirko was a picture of lazy, rather
feline grace; not to be characterized as effeminate, he yet did not
convey an impression of masculine supremacy, in spite of his broad
shoulders and the insolent lift of his moustache; his eyes were too
large, his hands and feet too small, his hair too silky, the symmetry of
his shape too perfect. He looked more like some handsome arrogant animal
than a man born to command men--yet there was no denying his
distinction, he was undoubtedly a thoroughbred.

Presently they returned to the shade of the awning and the deck chairs,
and the Prince drawing a notebook from his pocket, made little sketches
of Ragna.

"I shall carry something of you with me when our ways part," he said.

Ragna felt much flattered and regretted that her list of accomplishments
did not include drawing.

"But," she said, turning to Angelescu, who had sat a silent spectator,
"you can draw, I am sure, will you not make me a little sketch?"

Angelescu would be delighted; he went to his cabin and returned with
sketch book and pencil, and without more ado began work. Ragna wished to
look over his shoulder, but he would not hear of it.

"You must be patient till I have finished, Mademoiselle, I am not as
accomplished a draughtsman as the Prince, and I could not do anything if
you watched me."

Finally he produced a very pretty little sketch, representing the rail
at the stern, with the slender figure of a girl silhouetted against it,
one arm flung out in the act of scattering crumbs. The action was
spirited, the whole thing suggested by a few clear decisive strokes of
the pencil. Ragna was delighted with it and begged leave to inspect the
Count's sketch book; he refused in an embarrassed way, and the Prince,
seeing an occasion to tease his friend, made as if to snatch at the book
crying--

"Fie, how can you refuse a lady. What have you drawn that is so very,
very naughty that it can't be seen? Out with it!"

As he spoke, his hand touched the book, and in his haste to withdraw it,
Angelescu seized the upper cover. The book opened and two loose leaves
fluttered out and fell at Ragna's feet. She picked them up to return to
him, glancing at them involuntarily as she did so, and her attention was
arrested. The first sketch was a portrait of herself, idealized, but an
excellent likeness; the other was the Prince, also an admirable
likeness, but conveying an impression of evil--not conscious evil,
however, rather the face of a faun through whose eyes looked out a
laughing fiend. Ragna shivered unconsciously and turned to the Prince,
in whose good humoured countenance she failed to detect the slightest
expression similar to that in the drawing.

"So," said Mirko, "our dear Otto has been exercising his talents at our
expense! very clever indeed. The sketch of Mademoiselle is charming,
but, my dear fellow, what has induced you to lend my humble features to
your conception of the Devil? You flatter me, you do indeed!"

Angelescu visibly annoyed, made answer,

"I am sorry, I did not wish Mademoiselle to see that I had taken the
liberty of attempting her likeness without her permission, and I can
only beg that she will accept the little sketch as a token that she
bears me no ill will. As for the other, Your Highness, it was only an
idle fancy of mine, and it is only by accident that it may seem to
resemble you."

Ragna looked at the little sketches thoughtfully and said, "Count
Angelescu, you were wrong in sketching me without my permission, but I
will forgive that--especially as you have made me so pretty. As the
Prince has some sketches of me, I will let you keep this, if you wish
it, and I will keep the other."

But the Prince would have none of that.

"What, Mademoiselle, you wish to keep me before your eyes as a devil?
Never in the world; I won't have it!"

In the end, Angelescu was persuaded to draw another portrait of the
Prince with which to redeem the "Devil Sketch" which Ragna insisted on
holding as hostage until it should be replaced by a better.

More than once, in the course of the afternoon, Angelescu pleaded that
he had writing that must be attended to, official papers and reports
that must be prepared, but Mirko refused to let him go.

"You can do all that later," he would say.

Ragna caught Angelescu glancing anxiously at him from time to time, as
though suspecting him of some ulterior motive. The aide could hardly
insist, however, especially after the episode of the sketches--indeed he
had an uneasy feeling that the last word had not been said with regard
to them, and that the Prince meant to turn the situation thus created to
his own personal advantage. So the afternoon wore on, the Prince keeping
the ball of conversation gaily rolling, nothing in his appearance giving
the slightest hint that he thought of anything beyond the careless
enjoyment of the passing hour.

The sun was nearing the horizon as they went below to prepare for
dinner. A few light clouds flecked the sky, looking like the fleeces of
wandering lambs.

"It will be a perfect evening," said Mirko, "and we shall have a full
moon."

Ragna put on the same frock she had worn the evening before--it was her
best--but to-night she turned it in a little more at the neck and bosom,
and pinned on a piece of lace given her by her mother when she left
home. Her skin showed white in the opening and her delicate throat rose
from its frame like the stalk of a flower.

The Captain came to the saloon for dinner and sat at the head of the
table, having Prince Mirko on his right and Angelescu on his left; Ragna
sat by the Prince. All had good appetites and did full justice to the
excellent fare provided.

The Prince had given orders that champagne be served from the very
beginning and he made it his care to replenish Ragna's glass as often
as she emptied it.

Captain Petersen, busy with his dinner and in entertaining his
distinguished passengers to the best of his ability, noticed nothing,
but Angelescu's eyes were grave as he observed the girl's flushed
cheeks, and unnaturally bright eyes. He even ventured so far as to ask
her whether she were fond of champagne, to which she answered innocently
that she liked it very much but had never drunk much wine of any kind
whatever.

Captain Petersen broke in with his genial roar. "So you like the
champagne, Fröken Ragna? So do I! So do I! Not but what a little
'schnapps' in season, has its merits--still I suppose champagne is
better for a young lady than 'schnapps'!"

Angelescu relapsed into silence; if the captain, who was, in a way the
girl's guardian, saw nothing amiss, he himself would do no more. To do
the Prince justice, he had no thought of making his neighbour take more
than was good for her; he had no intention of doing her the slightest
harm; he wished to give her pleasure and at the same time to enjoy
himself. If in filling her glass he wore a slight air of bravado it was
that Angelescu's evident distrust of him and his intentions had stirred
up a certain obstinacy within him, and he was possessed by the desire to
outrage the would be protector's feelings. Mirko had shrewdly guessed
that Angelescu entertained a warmer regard for Ragna than he was willing
to admit of to himself; that the assumption of the protector's role
might not be wholly the disinterested or rather uninterested attitude
that the Count wished it to appear, as that, when at the close of dinner
Ragna went to her cabin for a wrap, he drew Angelescu aside and said to
him:

"I wish you to understand once and for all, Otto, that I will not
tolerate your interference and your silent criticism. It is all very
well for you to think that because you are older than I, and because we
have always been comrades you have the right to control me. I am your
Prince, and you will do well to remember the fact."

Angelescu, his face burning, cut to the quick, saluted and answered
stiffly.

"Your Highness shall be obeyed," then turned on his heel; but Mirko
called him back, already regretting the sharpness of his tone and
language towards his old playmate and faithful friend.

"Hold on, old man, don't take it like that! I didn't mean what I said,
at least not all. You seem to think me a sort of villain in disguise,
and you arrogate to yourself the responsibility for my conduct in every
direction. You sat at table glaring at me as if I were trying to poison
Mademoiselle. Now what is the matter with you?"

"I thought that Your Highness did not realize the fact that she is only
a child and quite unused to champagne--"

"Did you not hear the Captain?"

"The Captain is a rough old sailor, unused to young girls; I thought--"

"You think too much, Otto. Besides, it's rather new for you to play the
part of 'Squire of Dames' to wandering damsels--I believe the root of
the matter is that you are in love with the girl, yourself. Why don't
you marry her? You could, you know."

"Your Highness knows very well that I am not free to marry," said
Angelescu in a low voice, a dark flush spreading over his face. The
Prince knew well, as did everyone else, that his aide was bound, and had
been for years, to a married woman of high rank, whose unhappy married
life had been responsible for the forming of the liaison, and that now
time and custom and a quixotic sense of moral obligation continued to
bind the unfortunate Angelescu to the lady's chariot wheels, though any
feeling he had had for her was long since dead.

Ragna's entrance put a stop to further explanations, and Angelescu
excused himself, saying that he must attend to the neglected writing of
the afternoon. So the other two were left with the deck to themselves.

It was a perfect evening, the full moon hung low in an almost cloudless
sky and the broad silver pathway over the water looked like a carpet
laid for a procession of fairies. Ragna hung over the rail in an ecstasy
of appreciative joy.

"Oh, isn't it just like Heaven!" she murmured.

"I can't say," answered Mirko, "never having been there, but it would
make a good setting for a love scene. Imagine it for a honeymoon!"

"I must answer like Your Highness," laughed Ragna, "never having had a
honeymoon I can't very well imagine one."

"Then look at the lovers in the moon."

"Lovers in the moon!"

"What! have you never seen them?"

"I see only the hare, with his two long ears."

"Look again, the lady is on the right, and you see her head in profile,
her lover has a beard--there, do you see?"

"No," said Ragna, "I still do not see."

"That is because your eyes have not been opened; when you have had a
lover, you will see the Lovers in the moon."

Ragna laughed at the idea.

"Why should having a lover improve one's eyesight?" she asked.

"It will not improve your physical eyes, Mademoiselle, but it will open
your spiritual eyes to the world; just now your heart is blind."

To this Ragna found no answer; she stood silent, her face turned up to
the moon, still looking vainly for the Lovers. Mirko stood gazing at her
tempted by her fairness, her simplicity, and the moonlight.

"Do you realize the delightfulness of this episode?" he asked her
abruptly. "It will be like an oasis in the desert to look back on. I
should like you to forget this evening, that we are anything but just
our two selves; there is no Prince, there is no Fröken Andersen, we are
just you and I and nothing more. Yesterday we met, to-morrow we part,
probably for ever, so that there can be no thought of past or future to
embarrass us. There is no yesterday and no to-morrow, no time and no
limitation of space; we are all the world, we are quite alone and
detached from everything, you and I and the moon!"

His eyes were fastened on hers and held them; she could not have moved
away had she wished.

She answered in an embarrassed way:

"You wish to stop the hands of the clock for this evening?"

"Exactly--with your help."

The romance of the situation appealed to her.

"The clock has stopped," she announced gravely.

"Thank you," he murmured raising her hand to his lips.

Ragna laughed uneasily; it seemed to her that she was living in some
fairy tale.

The Prince led her to a deck chair and drew up another beside it. From
where they sat they could see the moon and the light upon the water,
but they were screened from the companion-way door, and indeed from most
of the deck, by the ventilator of the saloon and the shadow of a
life-boat. It was unusually warm for the North Sea, especially for so
early in the season, and Ragna found her heavy cloak oppressive.

"Take care you do not get cold," said the Prince as he helped her to
loosen the clasp at the neck. The whiteness of her throat seemed like
marble in the moonlight. Her hook had caught in her lace collar, and in
disentangling it the Prince's fingers brushed her bosom; they gave her a
tingling sensation and she started up.

"I beg your pardon," said Mirko; "it was not intentional, but if it had
been would you resent it? Where is the harm, are we not friends?"

"Friends," said Ragna, "just friends. You must not do things like that."

"Then give me your hand. Has anyone ever read your palm? No?"

He took her hand lying idly on a fold of her cloak and held it up in the
moonlight.

"I cannot see the lines, it is too dark, but your hand is beautiful, so
soft, so tapering!"

He drew the tips of his fingers over her palm and had the satisfaction
of seeing her shiver. She tried to draw her hand away, but he kept it.

"Ragna, little Ragna, there are many things, I should like to say to
you, but I am afraid you would misunderstand me. Do you know what you
are? You are the Sleeping Beauty, you are asleep, no one has come yet to
wake you; you are waiting for the Prince."

He paused, stroking her hand. His touch seemed to magnetise her, for her
hand lay passive within his and she made no effort to withdraw it as he
leaned towards her. The music of his voice seemed to hold her
enthralled,--perhaps the champagne she had drunk had something to do
with it,--she had no volition, her will was asleep.

"Who will the 'Prince' be, Ragna? A fair-haired lover with cold blue
eyes, or a Southerner--one who will burn you with his passion, who will
reveal to you all the magic of love? Is it not worth everything to feel
one's self awake, to live?"

The sense of his physical nearness almost overpowered her and she moved
uneasily. Mirko's fingers had crept to her wrist and seemed to burn the
tender skin.

"Are you afraid of me, Ragna?" he asked.

She answered that she was not, ashamed that he should think her timid
and unsophisticated. If he talked to her in this way, it must be the way
of the world, of his world. She felt that none of the men she had known
would speak to her as he spoke--but then she could not imagine their
doing so, without appearing extremely ridiculous. And then, she
reflected the Prince and she were on the open deck,--there could be no
harm, so she surrendered herself to the fascination of the moment.

"Ragna," the melodious voice at her ear murmured, "I could teach you so
much, so very much that you do not know--so many things that you will
never know if you marry one of your cold country men! I would teach you
to live, dear, to live and to love; I could make your heart beat and
your veins burn; I would hold you hard and fast in my arms,--or quite
lightly, and under my caresses you would live--oh, Ragna, to see the
light of Life in your sea-blue eyes, to feel your red lips learn to
kiss, to feel your beautiful body quiver, as you learned the mystery of
Love!"

In reality he had lost his head, he had let himself be led on by his
passionate fancy,--at first only a playful desire to flatter the girl,
to lead her on to graceful flirtation, but his hot blood had got the
better of him, and as he proceeded, the voluptuous image called up by
his words inflamed his senses and lost him to all sense of restraint or
prudence. He seized the girl, for Ragna, dazed, intoxicated and
fascinated by his daring speech, and by the magnetic suggestion of his
desire, opposed no resistance to his encircling arms. He drew her to
him, and covered her neck and bosom with burning kisses. She gasped half
fainting, then he took her mouth, and her eyes opened wide at the
revelation of a sensation the like of which she had never imagined.

But with the revelation came the awakening; with a frantic effort she
broke from him and stumbled to the rail. The action brought him to
himself and to a sense of shame.

"Oh, Ragna," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. "What have I done!
Pardon me! It was too much for me, your beauty, having you there, so
near me! Ragna, speak to me, tell me that you forgive me!"

He moved towards her, but seeing her shrink away from him, he stopped.
Ragna put out a trembling hand, and with a shaking voice said:

"Oh, why did you! Oh, you have spoiled it all!"

She turned to the rail, and hiding her face in her hands began to cry.

Mirko was really touched and concerned. He had no idea that a girl could
take a kiss so seriously, it gave him the measure of her innocence. He
came to her side and putting his hand on her shoulders tried to console
her with awkward phrases, but she still sobbed on. At last he began to
be annoyed and said rather sharply:

"What are you weeping so about anyway? Your life is not ruined, I have
kissed you, but I have apologized--I would never have done so if I had
known you would take it like this!"

Ragna looked up, bewilderment on her face. What! He could take it so
lightly! Then it was not so terrible after all? The poor child had felt
herself dishonoured for ever.

"But you will despise me for letting you kiss me!"

He was quick to seize the advantage.

"Despise you? Never in the world! What a little goose you are! What harm
is there in a kiss? And don't worry about it, I took it without your
consent--but you liked it--come now, be honest and admit that! I know
you liked it, I felt it!"

He stopped, seeing that he was going too far. Ragna had turned away from
him, her face burning. It was quite true, too true, she had felt herself
respond. What right had she to be indignant, since she must acknowledge
to herself that she had not resisted him, that she had not wished to.

His low vibrant voice continued:

"And one thing you can never change, never drive from your memory,--I
have had your first kiss; you will never forget that. No woman ever
forgets her first kiss, or her first lover:--"

He paused hearing footsteps approaching over the deck, and stepped to
the girl's side.

"Someone is coming," he said; "for God's sake pull yourself together and
remember that a kiss is not a crime. Come now, tell me you forgive me,
quick!" His voice had an imperious note, and Ragna yielded to it; she
turned to him, tears still shining on her long lashes in the moonlight.

"There, you do forgive me, it is understood?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"Pull your cloak up about your shoulders and hook it," he ordered and
she obeyed.

The footsteps had by now made the tour of the deck and were approaching
the sheltered nook; they rang loud in the silence. It was Captain
Petersen and as he hove in sight, his cheerful voice woke the echoes:

"So here I find them as snug as you please! Well, well, a moonlight
night and the deck of a good ship, and a pair of young folk to profit by
it all--what more could one want?"

Mirko engaged him in conversation, and Ragna thus had time to steady her
voice and regain control over her excited nerves. The effort was good
for her, and she was glad of the Captain's arrival. So was the Prince,
for the good man's coming tided over an awkward moment, as the "voyage
de retour" is bound to be--however short the journey may have been.

"To-morrow, our journey together will be over," said the Captain.
"To-morrow morning you will wake at Christiansand, after that little
Ragna and I go on to Molde alone--if we pick up no other passengers. I
am sorry Your Highness leaves us so soon--if ever you should wish a
cruise in northern waters, the old _Norje_ and I are at your service,
Prince!"

"Thank you, Captain Petersen," said Mirko, "I have enjoyed this little
trip exceedingly, thanks to your kind attentions and to Mademoiselle,
and I wish I might promise to renew it in the near future--but I am not
entirely my own master, you know."

Presently the Captain remarked that it was growing late, and Ragna,
rising, said she would go to bed. The Captain wished her a hearty, if
gruff "Good-night," but Mirko walked with her to the companion-way, and
after kissing her hand, held it while he murmured in a low voice:

"You will never forget this evening, nor shall I--dear!"

With a final pressure he released her hand and Ragna went slowly down.

Captain Petersen grumbled to himself as he watched them.

"Pity the fellow is a Prince. Handsome couple they would make, handsome
couple! After all, who knows, little Ragna is as pretty as a
princess--he might do worse!"

Prince Mirko returned to him fumbling vainly in his pockets.

"Have you a match about you, Captain?" he asked, "I must have left my
box below."

On a former occasion he had offered the Captain a cigarette from his
case, but the old sea-dog had refused it, explaining that he would get
no good out of a little paper stick, a pipe was the thing for him.

The Captain produced a box of matches and the Prince lit his cigarette.
Seeing him disinclined for further conversation, the old sailor left
him, and Mirko, leaning both elbows on the rail enjoyed his smoke while
he reviewed the events of the evening. In his innermost heart he was a
little ashamed of having given way to an impulse but then, he reflected
complacently, there was no real harm done, and after all, what is a
kiss? He was rather amazed at himself for giving the slightest
importance to the occurrence. His thoughts turned again to Ragna.

"What a little witch it is, and as unsophisticated as a newborn babe;
pretty, too, much too pretty, in the moonlight!" The fresh taste of her
mouth came back to him, like a strawberry, just ripe, he thought, and
the throbbing of her firm young bosom, as he had pressed her to him.
What a mistress she would make! Then he laughed at himself--"What! take
a mistress, a mere school girl at that, from the bosom of a respectable
bourgeoise family! What a row there would be! No, my son," he admonished
himself, "that game is not worth the candle!" He remembered too well the
trouble subsequent to his latest escapade of the sort, and made a wry
face. "No, no more luring of innocent maidens from their happy homes!"
He thought of Ragna going to bed in her little cabin, and a wild desire
came over him to follow her. The recollection of the kiss he had given
her suddenly maddened him. His pulses beat strongly and rang in his
ears. He must have her, he felt, must have her in spite of everything
and he started towards the companion-way, but before he reached it shame
seized him, and thrusting his hands savagely into his greatcoat pockets
he strode up and down the deck, fighting the impulse.

"Am I lost to all sense of decency?" he murmured, "What has come over
me?"

He walked until he was tired out, then went below and locked himself
into his state-room.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ragna, as soon as she reached her cabin, took down the oil lamp from its
swinging bracket and carrying it to the small mirror studied her face.
Was this creature with gleaming eyes, rosy cheeks, red mouth and
loosened hair the prim little Ragna of but a few hours since? This
looked more like the head of some young Bacchante, wine flushed and
triumphant. Indeed the "Princess" slept no longer, the spell was broken
and Ragna knew it. She replaced the lamp and undressed slowly, her
thoughts running tumultuous riot. She was astonished at finding herself
neither indignant nor ashamed--all that had passed. It seemed to her
that she had entered upon a new life, a door had opened upon a
heretofore unknown country, and many things came into perspective, that
she had not understood before. She had crossed the dividing line, she
was no longer a child, Eve had tasted of the apple.

As she lay in her berth some of the Prince's sayings came into her mind,
"an oasis in the desert," "there is no to-morrow and no yesterday," and
for the moment she hugged the thought, little dreaming how insidious it
was to prove. Who was to tell her that some day Eve's apple would prove
to be an Apple of Sodom? _Carpe diem_ was the Prince's avowed motto, and
was she already a convert and had she forgotten her own answer,
"Somebody has to bear the consequences"? She was too young though, to
realise that every act, no matter how insignificant, how detached
apparently from the main trend of life, has far-reaching consequences,
cropping out when we least expect them, bearing in their wake the most
extraordinary changes.

How was she to know that the kiss on deck in the moonlight bore in it
the seed of her future life. Her lips burned, and she felt, in
imagination, the pressure of Mirko's arms about her,--but at the same
time she was curiously conscious that this was not love, or not yet.
She felt, but could not define the distinction. Still she was not
ashamed, being still borne up by the wave of elemental impulse; she had
no room as yet for introspection and self blame--indeed they might never
come. The timid, untried girl of yesterday had vanished, a new,
passionate Ragna had taken her place.




CHAPTER V


Lars Andersen met his daughter at Molde. He seemed to have grown older,
and his face had a care-worn look. "The Grandmother was ill," he said;
"she had been ailing for some time, but now was bedfast and could not
live long."

Though he was truly glad to welcome Ragna home again, his
undemonstrative manner gave hardly a hint of it and the girl felt her
joy at seeing him effectually repressed and chilled.

At dinner with her father and the Captain she sat almost silent until
the old sailor rallied her on her dulness.

"You had more to say for yourself, Fröken, when the Prince was with us!"

"The Prince! What Prince?" asked Andersen.

"Prince Mirko of Montegria, who crossed with us from Hamburg to
Christiansand, on his way to the Court of Russia." The Captain went on
to give a roseate account of the Prince, his condescension, his
amiability, and wound up with:

"Little Ragna entertained him as though she had been a court-lady, and
you may well be proud of her!"

Andersen frowned; he knew more of men and of the ways of the world than
did the good Captain, who in many respects was but a grown-up child, and
he was displeased that his young and inexperienced daughter should have
been thrown into such companionship with a strange young man, prince or
no prince, as the Captain's account suggested.

Still, he did not wish to hurt the feelings of his old friend, and since
it was over and done with, the less said about the matter, the better.
Ragna, watching his face, guessed with newborn intuition the trend of
his thoughts, and with feminine diplomacy changed the subject, leading
the talk to her stay at the convent and entertaining the two men with a
lively account of the nuns, and of her school-fellows.

Her father studied her with a clearing face.

"What a child it still is," he thought, "this Prince Mirko nonsense has
rolled off her mind like water off a duck's back!" So he mused, and
putting aside his cares, encouraged her to continue her chatter. The
Captain was delighted to see his friend unbend, and joined his efforts
to Ragna's to keep the ball rolling.

So the evening passed merrily enough and it was not till the girl was
alone in her room that she let herself go. Rather scornfully she
thought:

"Oh, yes, they all think me a child! I am nearly nineteen, and they
think I have learned nothing but French verbs and embroidery. Well, let
them think it, better so! But if they knew, if they could guess!"

She shook out her long golden hair--it fell nearly to her knees--she
slipped out of her clothes and winding her long gauze scarf about her,
looked at herself in the glass, turning this way and that. Her body,
wonderfully white and firm had slight graceful curves like those of a
young nymph. She played with her hair, draping it about her shoulders
and bosom--truly this was a new Ragna! Then a sudden shame came over
her; she put on her nightgown, and blowing out the candle, plunged into
bed and lay blinking in the darkness. The thought she had had was not:
"I am beautiful," but "_He_ would think me beautiful."

"This must not go on," she said to herself. "You were a fool, Ragna, to
let him kiss you--you are a fool to think about him at all. Why can't
you let it be just an episode,--as he said? Of course he was only
playing with you. What do you suppose it meant to him to say a few
complimentary things to a little country girl--and kiss her?" But she
thought of the quiver in his deep voice, as he talked to her, on deck
that last evening, the passionate vibration of it that had fascinated
and stirred her, body and soul. She thought of his burning lips on hers
and his arms straining her to him so closely that it hurt her. No, in
that moment at least he had been sincere, he had loved her! The formal
leave-taking under the eyes of Angelescu and the Captain had meant
nothing. Oh! why could she not have been a princess--now she would never
see him again! Great tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down,
wetting her pillow, but she did not wipe them away. She was thinking how
dull it would be at home--how unendurable after this one brief glimpse
into the reality of life and emotion. Her innermost soul rebelled; she
threw out her arms, then strained them to her bosom.

"I want to live, to live, to live!" she cried to herself.

When she was calmer her clear mind reasserted its power as she reflected
that after all she was very young still, that the future might bring
much.

"It shall," she promised herself. "I will make it! I will not, I will
not be buried alive!"

She had not stopped to ask herself if she loved Prince Mirko; as a fact
she did not, but he had awakened her to life, he was identical to her
with Life and emotion. The mere fact of his being a stranger to her,
quite outside her limited field of experience, of his being a Prince
and heir to a throne, endowed him in her eyes with a halo of romance. In
default of a real hero, he would become her dream-hero, the axle round
which would revolve the wheel of her intimate thought.

In the morning, when dressed for the homeward journey, she joined her
father in the dining-room; she presented to his eyes the same innocently
childlike expression she had worn the evening before, and he kissed her
smooth brow, little dreaming of the thoughts which filled her head.

       *       *       *       *       *

As they drew nearer home, and the familiar mountains, the Trolltinder
with its jagged crest, and oddly shaped Romser Horn, loomed up against
the sky, Ragna felt her spirits rising. The air was cool and crisp, the
little horse trotted briskly along, shaking his short stiff mane, the
meadows were carpeted with flowers: forget-me-nots, pansies, and the
purple swamp orchids, the pine-trees filled the air with balsam. It was
home, the country of her birth. They rounded the last turn in the long
road; the sun was setting and the long rays illuminated the summits of
the mountains which her childish imagination had peopled with gnomes and
trolls.

Now they were turning in at the wooden gateway--another few minutes and
there was the long low cinnamon-coloured house, smoke rising hospitably
from the chimneys, behind it the stables and sod-roofed cottages, and on
the steps stood a welcoming group, mother, the sisters. "Oh, how they
have grown," thought Ragna, "and there is Aunt Gitta too!" she cried.
Behind them stood the servants, smiling and excited.

Almost before the _stulkjarre_ had stopped, Ragna was out over the
wheel, embracing them all in turn, laughing and trying to answer a dozen
questions at once.

Fru Andersen held her daughter at arm's length, to see her better.

"It is my 'little' Ragna no longer," she wailed. "You are taller than I,
and you have changed, dear--you went away a child, you come back a
woman!"

Her husband interrupted her, calling for the servants to take in Ragna's
luggage, and the good woman's further comments, if there were any, were
lost in the bustle that ensued.




CHAPTER VI


The days that followed were occupied with filling in the gap of the past
two years. All had much to ask, and Ragna was kept busy answering their
questions. Fru Andersen and Fru Boyesen were most interested in the life
at the convent, and the latter especially examined Ragna thoroughly as
to the studies pursued and the accomplishments acquired.

The sisters, Lotte and Ingeborg, wished to hear about the Prince,--a
Prince being to them almost as mythical a being as the old gods they had
read of in their mythology; they imagined him robed in ermine, his manly
brow decorated by a coronet. They never tired of returning to the
subject, but were much disappointed by Ragna's matter of fact story, and
the Prince lost much of his prestige in their eyes when they learned
that he dressed and spoke like an ordinary mortal.

"And you talked to him just as if he were one of us?" asked Lotte in an
awe-struck voice. "You really did and you were not a bit scared, not one
bit?"

"Of course not, you silly little goose!" laughed Ragna, as if
conversation with princes were an everyday occurrence to her. She was
not above airing her recently acquired graces before these country mice.

"What did you say to him? What did he talk to you about?" chimed in
Ingeborg.

"Oh, about the weather and the gulls and the moon--anything."

"I don't call that very much," said Lotte, much disappointed. "I should
have thought you would talk about wars and court-balls, and things like
that."

"Oh, dear, no,--one doesn't talk about those things, it would seem
affected and silly."

"And didn't he make love to you? They always do in stories," queried
Lotte, then seeing her sister blush. "I believe he did--and you're too
mean to tell. What did you talk about anyway, that makes you blush like
that?" she added with a child's terrible perspicacity.

"I'm blushing at your curiosity, that's what I'm blushing at," returned
Ragna, angry at having betrayed herself. "And if you went to the Sisters
they'd tell you it was ill-bred to ask so many questions and pry into
what isn't your business!" Afraid of betraying herself further she got
up and left them.

The three girls had been sitting on a rock, not far from the house,
where they had long been accustomed to take their work on summer
afternoons. The younger girls stared at each other thunderstruck, as
Ragna walked away.

"Well," said Lotte, "it's rude to ask a civil question, and it's all
right to get up and go off in a temper. What is the matter with her
anyway? I'm sure I wish the old Prince had never spoken to her at all,
it has turned her head, being taken notice of, that's what it is!"

Ingeborg said nothing; she merely bit off her thread reflectively as she
followed Ragna's retreating figure with her eyes. Less impulsive than
Lotte, and endowed with a finer intuition, she felt that if Ragna were
keeping something from them it would be useless to try and drag it out
of her, and not only that, she realized as Lotte did not, that each of
us has his or her own little "Secret Garden," of memory and fancy, of
which no hand, however intimate, may open the gate. But vaguely
conscious of this, herself, she felt how useless it would be to explain
it to Lotte, whose frank curiosity knew no such restraint.

Lotte stitched on viciously, indignant at the snub she had received, and
giving vent to her feelings in intermittent monologue.

"She thinks us ninnies or children, that's what she does, but she's not
so awfully grown up, after all! She's not nineteen yet, and I'm sixteen,
and you're nearly fifteen. Oh, yes, we're not good enough for her
Ladyship to talk to; she's used to Princes and Kings and Popes, she is!
And she thinks she has come back to teach us her fine French manners!"

Ragna walked on, away from her sisters and away from the house. Her path
lay some way through the woods, then across two or three pastures and
out to a rocky point overlooking the fjord. She marched on, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, consumed with vexation for having
been so easily led on to retort. Of course Lotte had been annoying, but
she had always been a bundle of curiosity. And how sharp the child was!
"I must be a transparent fool," thought poor Ragna, "if any child can
see through me like that!"

As she crossed the third pasture someone hailed her; she looked up, and
saw, sitting on a rock under a tree, her Aunt Gitta, knitting
industriously, a sheaf of flowers lying on the ground beside her. Ragna
went to her, and she indicated a place on the boulder beside her.

"Sit down, Ragna," she said, "I have been wishing for a chance to talk
to you alone."

Ragna obediently seated herself, and drawing the flowers to her, began
sorting them and making them up into bouquets. Fru Boyesen coughed once
or twice, as though in doubt how to begin. She looked at her niece in a
tentative way, but the girl was seemingly intent on her flowers, and
gave no assistance.

Finally in a rather embarrassed manner, she began by asking Ragna what
she thought of doing.

"Doing, Aunt Gitta?" asked Ragna, lifting her head in surprise, "I had
not thought of doing anything!"

"Then your father has not told you?"

"He has told me nothing,--what is there to tell?"

"You have been away for two years, and I suppose no one wished to worry
you, but the fact is," Aunt Gitta lowered her voice as if about to
reveal some terrible secret,--and really, to her practical mind anything
connected with money-loss was terrible,--"the fact is that your father
has lost money in several ways and the estate is mortgaged!"

Ragna gazed at her with wide eyes; this explained then, her father's
anxious look, the small changes in the way of living, the
thread-bareness, slight as yet, of things in general. She had put it
down to the Grandmother's illness--but again that had not explained the
fewer horses in the stables and the simpler fare.

"Oh, poor father!" exclaimed Ragna.

"Oh, yes," said Fru Boyesen, "but it is partly his own fault; he would
not take my advice, he made some imprudent investments, and of course he
has had bad luck with the horses, this year of all years. Three good
foals lost, and Green Hunter broke his leg and had to be shot. But that
is not the point; it is this, when your Grandmother dies, and she cannot
live long, poor woman, her income goes with her, and what your father
and mother will do then, I do not know. Of course your father can't
afford to send Ingeborg and Lotte away to school as he has sent you--and
it is better for them that he can't, they can help at home and your
mother need keep fewer servants. Now as to you, you are of no earthly
use in the house, you know nothing about cheese and butter-making, nor
of practical housekeeping. Your fine embroidery and piano playing and
French and Italian won't help you here, and I know you don't want to be
a burden." She paused to wipe her glasses before turning the heel in her
stocking.

Ragna had listened to her, leaning her head on her hand and her elbow on
her knee, the flowers quite forgotten. Being so young she was rather
exhilarated than depressed by the implied suggestion that she must fend
for herself.

"Don't you think, Aunt Gitta, that I might teach?"

"Teach whom? Where? One, two, three, four, um-um,--Who wants to
learn,--five, six and seven,--French here? There now, I've lost count, I
must begin all over again! Don't interrupt me for five minutes."

Fru Boyesen said this intentionally in order to give Ragna time to take
the situation in. The girl knew that her Aunt was quite correct: who
indeed, out in the country would wish to learn anything she could teach?
When she was sure the five minutes were up, she spoke again, timidly.

"I meant in a town, Aunt Gitta, or I could be a governess."

"Teach in a town! Where are your certificates, my dear?"

It was true, of certificates Ragna had none but those of elementary
study. The convent gave no certificates. Her face fell.

"And as for governessing,--my niece a governess? An Andersen a
governess? Never."

"Well, then, Aunt Gitta, what can I do? You say yourself I can't live on
here and be a burden." She had reached the point her Aunt had meant her
to reach from the start.

"Listen, Ragna," she said kindly, "you know you have always been my
favourite niece, you are the one who takes most after our side of the
family. Now, my child, this is my proposition,"--she took Ragna's hand
and held it, with a fine disregard of her knitting. "My idea is this: I
have no children and I am often lonely in my house,--it is too large for
one woman. Now I think the best thing would be for you to come and live
with me. I should look after you and give you an allowance as if you
were my own daughter, and I should consider you as such.--No, don't
speak yet, let me finish. I have spoken of this plan to your parents; of
course they would rather keep you with them, but I pointed out to them
how foolish it would be to throw away such a chance for a purely
sentimental scruple. I said to them: 'The girl is grown, she is of no
use to you here, and she should marry--but who? With her new ideas she
won't take up with any man from these parts, she is not the kind of a
girl who can marry a farmer and be happy! With me she will have the
advantages of city life, and I shall keep my eye on her and her
chances.' So they said they would leave it to you; if you wish to go
with me, well and good,--if not, you may stay with them and weigh them
down!" She stopped, searching the girl's face, but Ragna did not answer
at once, nor jump at the proposition as the good lady had expected.

Indeed, Ragna was by no means sure of her own mind; but a few days
since, she had vowed that she would not submit to being buried alive,
and yet before this most unexpected chance of escape from the monotony
of country life she hesitated. An unaccountable repugnance to leaving
home again, seized her--perhaps the mere spirit of contradiction called
up by her Aunt's certainty as to her answer. Besides it seemed to her
like a sort of treachery, an evidence of moral cowardice, to desert her
parents at this juncture. But then, as her Aunt had said, what could she
do to help them, at home? Nothing. On the other hand, if she accepted
her Aunt's offer, and the arrangement proved impossible, she would be
better situated to find employment in a city like Christiania. She knew
Fru Boyesen's determined character, her love of ordering the lives of
others, and doubted if life with her would be bearable for long. If it
were not for that! Then she reproached herself for ingratitude--was this
the way to receive such a generous offer?

"Well?" asked Fru Boyesen.

"Aunt Gitta," said Ragna slowly, choosing her words, "it is very, very
good of you to want me, and if Father and Mother tell me they do not
need me, I shall be glad to accept your offer."

"Well then, that's settled," said her Aunt cheerfully, "only you don't
seem as pleased as you might. It's not every girl has such chances come
her way, let me tell you!"

The girl leaned forward impulsively and kissed her Aunt who returned
the embrace amply, and they sat in silence for a short time, until Fru
Boyesen's lively tongue got the better of her. She launched into a
lengthy description of her life in Christiania and of the neighbours and
friends, but Ragna heard little; her thoughts were busy with the new
life opening before her, as she mechanically finished tying up the
flowers. As in a dream she heard fragments,--details of Fru Hendersen's
illness that had puzzled all the doctors, and why the Klaad girls wore
blue stockings with all their frocks, and how much Ole Bjornsten had
paid for his new carriage--"Most extravagant I call it,"--till her Aunt
finally shook out her completed stocking and rose, brushing the moss
from her skirts.

"You are a good girl, Ragna," she said commendingly, "and you have
learned to talk quite interestingly."

Ragna smiled but made no comment, so they wended their way home, Aunt
Gitta looming up large in front, her skirts held high displaying a
well-filled pair of worsted stockings--she boasted of always knitting
her own,--ending in stout elastic-sided boots. Ragna followed her,
outwardly meek, but inwardly convulsed with her relative's appearance,
and wondering what would happen, should the bull have been in his usual
pasture, for the good lady confessed to a taste for bright colours and
affected a cathedral-window style of dress, and the combination she had
evolved to-day was wonderful to behold. Her dress was of royal purple,
over which miniature rising suns made splotches of white, her bonnet was
a deep, rich blue, while a small scarlet shawl decorated her portly
shoulders.

"I hope to goodness she won't try to dress me in her own style!" thought
Ragna.

As they neared the house it was evident that something had happened;
there was a confusion of people rushing to and fro and a servant was
officiously closing the shutters of the upper rooms.

Ingeborg, standing in the doorway flew to meet them as they reached the
gate.

"Oh, Aunt Gitta! Oh, Ragna!" she exclaimed in a loud hoarse whisper,
looking at the same time frightened and important. "I've been looking
for you everywhere! It happened an hour ago, and where you've ever
been--"

Fru Boyesen took the girl by the shoulders and shook her.

"What is it? Can't you speak out? Don't beat about the bush like a
fool!"

"Grandmother's dead" said the child, boldly, and burst into tears.

Fru Boyesen pushed her aside and ran into the house and up to her
mother's room. It was as Ingeborg had said, the old woman had quietly
passed away. Her daughter-in-law, sitting in the room, had not seen when
it happened,--she only noticed after a time that the place seemed
unusually silent, as when a clock in a living-room stops its ticking,
and going over to the bed, she saw that the old woman was no longer
breathing. She felt for a pulse in vain, and a mirror held to the mouth
remained unclouded, so she had drawn the sheet up over the still, white
face and called the family.

Ragna and Ingeborg followed their Aunt up the stairs and into the room.
Lars Andersen stood by the bed, holding the dead woman's hand; his
sister had thrown herself upon her knees beside him; at the foot of the
bed stood Lotte and her mother, and by them Ragna took her place.
Ingeborg stopped in the doorway, sobbing loudly with hysterical
excitement, and also with honest grief, for she sincerely loved her
grandmother. Lars Andersen turned in his place and in a low, stern voice
reprimanded her.

"Stop that boisterous sobbing, Ingeborg! I am ashamed of you! Go to your
room until you can control yourself!"

Ragna quietly slipped out and led the weeping child away--none of the
others had even turned a head.

"Oh, Ragna," sobbed Ingeborg, as they reached the little room with its
dormer window, "isn't it dreadful? Only this morning I was sitting with
her and she said the knitting hurt her eyes, and she would finish it
to-morrow--and it was for me--and now she is de-e-ad--" her voice rose
in a wail.

Ragna took her into her arms, and sitting down, drew her on her knees.

"Oh, Ingeborg," she said, "you mustn't cry so, indeed you mustn't! We
ought to be glad she died peacefully like that. Of course it would have
been awful if it had happened when you were alone with her this
morning."

"It isn't that, it isn't that at all," said Ingeborg, in an awed voice.
"It's just dreadful that she should have been alive like you or me only
an hour ago,--and now she is dead like a light when it is blown out. She
was here and now she is gone--she's nowhere!"

"Oh, Ingeborg, you shouldn't talk like that!" cried Ragna, shocked. "Her
soul has gone to God in Heaven!"

"Do you really believe that, Ragna?" asked the child. "I don't,--I don't
care what they say. When Balke, my dog, died, I wanted to bury him and
put up a tombstone, but the Pastor wouldn't let me; he said animals
have no souls and Christian burial is only for people. Balke knew lots
more than ever so many people; he had a great deal more soul than a
baby. When do babies get their souls? I know they don't have them when
they are born, they're too stupid,--and so when do they get them? I said
if Balke wouldn't go to Heaven I didn't believe there was one at all, so
there!"

She sat up with flushed face and looked at her sister defiantly.

Ragna did not know what to answer; she had never seriously questioned
any religious doctrine that had been taught her and Ingeborg's revolt
both shocked her and found her unprepared.

"Aren't you ashamed to talk like that, Ingeborg Andersen?" she said
indignantly. "Of course there is a Heaven and a Hell, and perhaps good
dogs have a Heaven of their own--I don't know! If there is one, I'm sure
Balke went there," she ended lamely.

Ingeborg was watching her with curious unchildlike eyes.

"You don't believe in Heaven any more than I do," she asserted. "If you
did you'd talk about it differently. People have told you things and you
have just gone on believing them to save yourself the trouble of
thinking."

She slipped from Ragna's knees and crossed to the window, where she
stood looking out; she left her sister thunderstruck. The child had
spoken the truth--but how had she known, by what intuition had she
understood? Ragna went over to her, and putting an arm about her, stood
some minutes in silence before she asked:

"What made you say that, Ingeborg?"

"I don't know, but it is so and you can't deny it. Oh, I often know
what people think about when they don't know themselves, and I often
know, too, what is going to happen to people. Grandmother told me I was
fey; you see I'm the youngest and I'm the seventh daughter and so was
mother, and those people always are, Grandmother said so."

"How can you know? What do you do?"

"Oh, nothing, I just look into people's eyes, and sometimes I see
things, and sometimes I don't."

"Can you tell me what will happen to me?" asked Ragna in a low voice.

Ingeborg turned and looked long into her sister's eyes. The sun had sunk
below the mountains and a cool grey light pervaded the place. She stood
motionless a long time, then she passed her hand over her forehead and
half turned away.

"I don't want to tell you, Ragna," she said.

But Ragna insisted, she would know, she was not superstitious; she only
wanted to see if it would come true.

"It will come true--it always does," said Ingeborg sadly.

"Then tell me, I'm not afraid."

Ingeborg hesitated, then seeing that Ragna was in earnest:

"I will tell some of it, but I do not see very clearly. You are going
away, to begin with, I see you with Aunt Gitta and there are many people
but their faces are shadows. Then you go away farther still, where the
sun is hot--it dazzles you, and there is a man--or is it a greyhound?"
Ragna started. "Yes, it is a man, but there is a greyhound and a hare
and some stone arches, and you are very sad after that, Ragna. But the
man goes away and there is another man with eyes like coals, and he
hates you--he puts chains on you, and you can't break them, and you
never come home any more--" Her voice died away.

Ragna stood spellbound: a greyhound and a hare--her dream! And the rest,
the chains, the man with the burning eyes! She shivered; it was as
though the shadow of a dark wing had passed over her, her flesh crept.
Neither spoke for some time; it grew darker.

A maidservant entered the room with a light. Ragna shook herself to
throw off the incubus. The maid began to speak of the Grandmother, of
how good she had been, and the girls looked at one another ashamed--they
had quite forgotten it all for the moment.

"Come, Ingeborg," said Ragna, "let us go down again." Hand in hand they
descended the stair.




CHAPTER VII


The funeral was set for the day week and the intervening time seemed
interminable, at least to the younger members of the family. Fru Boyesen
was invaluable; her practical good sense which not even grief could
impair, employed itself in arranging the thousand and one details
incident to a death.

Ragna took her turn with her elders in watching at night in the
death-chamber. She had begged to do it and had obtained permission, but
when the night came and she was left alone in the terrible silent room,
a single candle burning on the table beside her, casting grotesque and
fitful shadows over the motionless form on the bed, and over the walls,
a kind of panic seized her. She wished she had not persisted in
obtaining the vigil. It was horribly lonely, more so than she could have
imagined by day. She could hear the ticking of the tall clock on the
landing outside the door; no other sound came from the sleeping
house--it was like sitting in a funeral vault she thought. An owl was
hooting dismally in a tree far off and the mournful noise had an uncanny
sound in the pervading stillness. The window was partly open and
occasionally a puff of air would make the candle gutter, and then the
shadows moved and took on unearthly shapes.

Ragna tried to keep her mind on the book her mother had left with her,
but without avail; her mind would wander, and her eyes turned
continually to the bed in the corner--it was as though the dead woman
called her, requiring insistently her whole attention. She was a healthy
girl, not in the least morbid, but the stillness, the tension wore on
her nerves until the strain became unbearable. She looked uneasily to
right and left and over her shoulder as though she expected to see
strange and grisly shapes emerging from the shadows. A kind of panic
seized her; she felt as if she must scream. A terrible unreasoning fear
overcame her, the horror of the presence of the dead body submerged her
spirit, a curious stiffness possessed her limbs and seemed to bind her
to her chair; she felt the roots of her hair crawl, and her fingers
worked convulsively. The book she had been reading dropped to the floor
with a bang. The noise broke the spell and she gave a long shuddering
sigh; she raised her hand to her forehead and was surprised to find it
wet.

"This will never do," she said to herself resolutely, and rising, she
went to the window. There was no moon, but everything showed clearly in
the light northern night. The trees near the house rose in a dark
stippled mass against the sky. Everything was peaceful and quiet, only
the drowsy twittering of birds broke the silence from time to time; the
owl had gone. Ragna stood at the window breathing the chill night air
and let the peace of the night sink into her soul. When she was quite
calm she closed the window and taking the candle walked resolutely over
to the bed and stood there, looking. The face of the dead woman wore an
expression of ineffable peace--a repose almost inhuman in its
detachment. Her white hair was brushed in smooth bandeaux over her brow,
her features, ashy grey with violet shadows, appeared almost unreal, as
though carved in some strange alabaster. Her hands, waxen and stiff
with bluish nails lay folded on her bosom. The flickering light of the
candle lent no semblance of life. Ingeborg's words came to Ragna's mind.
Where indeed was the spirit that had animated this clay? And to the
question she found no answer. In the actual presence of death the
formally taught maxims regarding a future life--a life of reward and
punishment--fell to the ground; the flimsiness of all speculation on the
Life hereafter appeared naked to the girl's eyes.

"No one can know, no one can tell," she thought, "it is a mystery, but
at least one may find peace--she has found peace!" She stooped and
reverently kissed her grandmother's cold hands, then she returned to her
seat.

The moment had been a crucial one, for in that instant of putting her
conventional belief to the touchstone of reality, it had failed and she
recognized the fact; the bed-rock on which her childish faith had been
built fell from beneath her feet, for, if she lost her belief in part,
disbelief in all must follow. A chain is no stronger than its weakest
link, but the weak link in her chain was not, as she thought, the
insufficient grounds for belief, rather the formality of her teaching;
to her the "letter which killeth" had indeed become dead, and of the
"Spirit which giveth light" she knew as yet nothing. This one thing she
knew, that never again should she be afraid of the dead or of death. "It
is peace," she said to herself softly, "it is like sleep when one is
very, very tired."

When morning had come and they relieved her at her post, she walked out
to the high rocky promontory from which she could see the sea. The day
was still young and the grass and bushes were covered with dewdrops.
Ragna gathered a handful of flowers as she went and pressed their wet
freshness to her face. She felt grave and old; the bright sunlight
seemed like an insult in the fact of the long night and the silent
darkened room. She seated herself on a grey lichen-covered boulder
overlooking the water. The fjord was like glass, as far as the eye could
reach and it reflected the surrounding mountains like a mirror; to her
tired eyes it was unreal, like a pictured scene. As she sat there, a
breeze sprang up and tiny ripples ruffled the surface of the water,
spreading from shore to shore. The reflections of tree and crag shivered
into a thousand fragments. Up the bay a boat was putting out from the
little village. Ragna idly watched the rise and fall of the oars. A girl
was rowing, swaying to the rhythm of the stroke; she was standing and
her red bodice stood out against the background, a vivid patch of
colour. She was singing and her clear voice rose in plaintive minor
notes. Smoke began to rise from the village chimneys, and a dog barked.

It was Life going on, taking no heed of those who fall by the wayside,
Life, the cruel Wheel, crushing the weak, casting to one side those who
would clog the onward march--life, the Life of the world to whom the
individual existence, the individual pain and strife are of no
importance; life continuing the same throughout the ages, no matter who
dies, no matter who suffers.

"The mountains do not change, nor the sky, no matter who comes or goes,"
thought Ragna, "and everything goes on just the same, no one is
necessary, continuity is everything. If we suffer, if we die, what does
it matter? I shall die, we shall all die, and in a few years it will
make no difference to anyone; there is no real change, only people come
and go. That is the real eternity--just the same old round, over and
over again, and on forever." She sat a long time, her chin supported in
her palms, her eyes, steel blue, gazing out steadily over the New World
made manifest to her.

In after years she often thought of the hours spent there by the fjord
in the early morning, and the memory nearly always brought peace to her
heart. Her own troubles seemed so trivial, so transient in comparison
with the age old changelessness of life, her own life and destiny so
unimportant in the endless chain of humanity.




CHAPTER VIII


When all was over, Ragna accompanied her aunt to Christiania. She was
given a comfortable room on the first floor and soon settled into the
pleasant regularity of the household. It was very quiet--there could be
no entertaining until the period of mourning should be over--but
intimate friends often came in the afternoon and evening, and very
pleasant circles formed about the cheerful lamp. Fru Bjork was a
frequent visitor and made much of Ragna. The girl had taken her fancy
when they had journeyed to Paris together and moreover she was convinced
that the friendship of a serious-minded girl like Ragna was excellent
for Astrid. The girls kept up a lively correspondence and in a few
months Astrid would be coming home. Ragna looked forward to her coming
with some impatience; though they had actually but little in common,
there was at least the mutual experience of school-life, and since
Ragna's awakening experience, much that had been incomprehensible to her
in Astrid's nature now became clear.

"She knew more than I did about things--and I was proud of my
ignorance," she reflected. She was as yet unable to realize the
difference between Astrid's shallow feminine coquetry and her own
awakening consciousness of womanhood.

Fru Boyesen and Fru Bjork had been schoolmates and although differing as
to character, were excellent friends, owing to the ties of life-long
association and a common point-of-view in social matters. Each of the
ladies entertained a tolerant pity for the foibles of the other, which
is perhaps the most comfortable _modus vivendi_ to be found.

Ragna's time was well occupied. By her own wish she continued her
studies under the best professors obtainable--that part was Aunt Gitta's
doing. Literature interested her more than anything else and after a
time she was encouraged to try her hand at writing a series of short
essays. To her great delight a well-known review accepted them, and this
materially affected her relations with her aunt. The good lady had
heretofore regarded her as a child to be exhaustively directed and
controlled, but a niece whose writings were published was quite a
different person in her estimation. In common with many people of
prosaic mind she had a genuine respect for intellectual attainments,
therefore, Ragna was promoted to a position of semi-independence, her
working hours were held sacred, and to give her more time for her
literary pursuits such household tasks as had fallen to her share were
removed as incompatible. This was a mistake, for the homely work would
have been a wholesome antidote to the romantic trend of the girl's mind.
Withdrawn from the ordinary business of the house, she lived an unreal
life made up of fanciful imaginings which her philosophical and literary
studies were unable to counteract. She had no experience of actualities
to control and place in their proper perspective the various social and
philosophical theories which formed the greater part of her reading.
Consequently with nothing to counter-balance the paramount influence of
the moment, she swayed to the mental attitude of whatever author she
happened to be reading, being in turn, or imagining herself a
Swedenborgian, an agnostic, an atheist, and a mystic.

She was cynical with Voltaire and romantic with Byron and De Musset. For
a considerable period the "categorical imperative" haunted her days and
nights, and during three months at least. "Also sprach Zarathustra" was
the sun whose rising and setting determined her getting up and her
sitting down. But Nietsche did not last long; his doctrine was too
foreign to her nature and she returned to Kant as to an old friend.

Fru Boyesen was not a little worried by these moral and spiritual
waverings, but never having known anything of the kind herself, was
unable to cope with the case. She took a purely material view of the
situation. They were now out of mourning, but Ragna seemed to have
little taste for society in general, and none for that of young men; she
preferred her books, she said, when her aunt rallied her on the subject.
Now Fru Boyesen had been at some pains to obtain for her niece a circle
of eligible masculine acquaintances; she had made it known that she
considered the girl as her adopted daughter and would make her her
heiress, and there was no lack of eligible suitors; so when Ragna had
sent two of the most desirable firmly but kindly about their business
with no better excuse than that they did not happen to be congenial to
her, her aunt felt that it was time to interfere.

She would have considered either of them a most desirable husband for
her niece--was not young Nansen tall and handsome as well as the only
son of wealthy parents? And was not Peter Näss a most estimable young
man and well situated to make a wife comfortable and happy? What was
Ragna waiting for? A white blackbird?

Ragna threw her arms about her aunt's neck.

"Dear Aunt Gitta, I am so happy with you! I don't want to marry ever, I
think!"

"Not want to marry, child? You are crazy! It is a woman's duty to marry
and rear children--the Bible says so. Perhaps you think you are in love
with some other young man?"

No, Ragna was in love with no one.

"Well then, why did you refuse Ole Nansen?"

"Because I did not love him."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense! Not love him! Very probably you don't, but that
is not essential, not one woman in a hundred 'loves' her husband until
after she has married him. The important part is that everything else
should be suitable. There's nothing you dislike in him, is there?"

"No, Auntie."

Fru Boyesen raised her eyes to Heaven.

"Well, all I can say is, you'll never get such a chance again; young
Nansen is a man in a thousand."

"Are you so anxious to be rid of me, Auntie dear?"

"No, of course not, goosie," she kissed the girl affectionately, "but I
should like to see you married, in a home of your own. It would be much
better for you, I am sure. I don't really approve of this one-sided life
you are leading."

"But, Auntie dear, how could I marry a man who takes no interest in my
work? These young men are very nice and all that, but we have absolutely
nothing in common. I asked Peter Näss the other day what he thought of
the Kantian philosophy, and he said he had never thought about it at
all. These young men never like to talk about serious subjects and they
refuse to take me seriously when I do."

"Ah, Ragna," said the elder woman, "when you have a home and children to
look after, you will find that all your philosophy goes to the wall."

"But that is just what I am afraid of, why should I stifle all my higher
instincts in a commonplace marriage?"

She had not told her aunt, however, what was the real matter with her.
The fact was that try as she might, she could not rid herself of the
memory of Prince Mirko and that moonlit crossing of the North Sea. His
kiss remained imprinted on her lips and his idealized image on her
heart. She mentally compared with him the young men of her acquaintance
and weighing them in the balance, found them woefully wanting.

One evening, sitting alone with her in the drawing-room, young Nansen
had kissed her--the effect had been electrical. Furiously rubbing her
offended cheek, she had reprimanded him in such terms of withering scorn
that the poor young man fled, never to call again. Afterwards she was
ashamed of her outburst, and analysing her feelings, as she had come to
do, was obliged to admit to herself that the cause of her resentment was
not the temerity of her suitor, but the fact that he had failed to awake
in her an answering thrill. She liked the young man, and her vanity
would have been pleased by the marriage, for he was the best "parti" in
Christiania, but her conscious womanhood revolted at a loveless union.
Was the shadow of a kiss to spoil her life? In vain she reasoned with
herself, the unconquerable memory remained; she felt it like an
indelible mark on her.

Fru Boyesen in despair at her niece's obstinacy and foolishness, and
after many fruitless attempts to bring the girl round to her point of
view, finally betook herself to Ragna's old professor, Dr. Tommsen. She
laid the case before him and begged him to use his influence with his
wayward pupil--she would surely listen to him.

Dr. Tommsen had received Fru Boyesen in his study. He sat, in an old
leather-covered armchair between the porcelain stove where a fire was
burning, and his large, much belittered writing table, gazing at his
visitor in good-humoured perplexity and twiddling his thumbs--a habit of
his when not engaged in writing or reading. His spectacles were pushed
up on his bulging forehead and his keen grey eyes peered out from under
shaggy, grizzled eyebrows, which he had a habit of working up and down
in a terrifying manner. His sanctum was not often invaded by ladies, and
the presence of a portly dame arrayed in green silk trimmed with bugles
and yellow lace and protected by a dead-leaf mantle, and the singularity
of her coming to him, a bachelor of well-known eccentricity, in order
that her niece should be prevailed upon to enter the bonds of matrimony,
appealed to his sense of humour.

Therefore, when Fru Boyesen had finished her elaborate exposition of the
case, the Doctor pursed up his lips and his eyes twinkled.

"My dear Madam," he said, "I fail to see how I can be of any assistance
to you, I have so little experience in these matters."

"You could advise Ragna, my dear Herr Doctor--she would listen to you.
She must be persuaded to take a reasonable view of life."

"Ah, that depends on what one considers a reasonable view," he said
judicially, putting the tips of his fingers together. "From my
standpoint your niece's objections appear quite reasonable. You may not
be aware, my dear lady, though most people are, that theoretically I
disapprove of marriage."

"Disapprove of marriage! Oh, Herr Doctor, you can't mean that!" cried
Fru Boyesen horrified, feeling the solid ground slipping from beneath
her feet, as it were.

"Precisely, Madam--or to be more exact, I disapprove of marriage as now
generally practised. I regard it as a social contract, useful to
humanity in general, since no better substitute has been found as yet,
but I certainly do not consider it an ideal state, and it would be
against my avowed principles to urge any young person--much more so one
of the 'élite,' among whom I place Ragna--to enter upon a form of
contract which I personally consider both futile and degrading--an
insult to the intelligence."

This was too much for Fru Boyesen; she gasped angrily, but found herself
unable to give articulate utterance to her amazement and indignation.
The Professor, his eyes twinkling more and more, pursued in a calm
deliberate voice.

"Since you do not answer, I take it that you agree with me in the
main--or perhaps your estimation of your niece is not the same as mine?"

"I most certainly do not agree with you, Dr. Tommsen," said Fru Boyesen
hotly; "I am a married woman myself, and a respectable one, and I assure
you I have found nothing either degrading or futile in the married
state. I do not think you should use such words in connection with a
divine institution."

"Ah, that is where we differ, dear Madam," returned the Professor,
gently rubbing his palms together--it amused him on occasions to tease
the conventionally-minded--"You consider it a divine institution and I
do not--however that is not the point. I admit that some persons are
obviously qualified for matrimony and find their vocation in it--you
think your niece to be one of those, I do not."

Fru Boyesen interrupted him.

"But there is where you are wrong, Herr Doctor. Ragna is made for
marriage, trust an old woman for that. She is not the girl to be an old
maid. I am anxious for that reason--if she lets her best years go by and
despises the chances that offer, she will regret it when it is too late.
I love her, Herr Doctor, and old women see farther than young ones--I
want to see her happy in the way that God intended her to be."

"Then for God's sake leave her alone, Madam, leave her to God. If you
are right about her, and she does marry, let it be at her own time and
by her own choice; nothing but harm can come of forcing her inclinations
in any way."

"But, Doctor, she has already refused two of the most eligible--I think
it a poor return after all I have done for her--"

"Let her refuse ten, let her refuse twenty! To show her gratitude must
she sell her body to the highest bidder?"

Fru Boyesen bounded rather than rose from her chair; the very ribbons on
her bonnet bristled with indignation. Her back was a study in outraged
virtue as she moved majestically towards the door. The doctor was before
her.

"One moment, Madam, I beg!"

"I have heard quite enough, more than enough," she said in a frozen
voice.

"My dear lady, I beg your pardon if my words were too forcible; what I
intended to say was that should your niece marry a man for his
position, without love for him, it would be equivalent to selling
herself, and you who have her ultimate happiness at heart would not wish
that, I am sure." He smiled, and he had a most winning smile. "My dear
Fru Boyesen, you come to discuss this matter with me; I am an old man,
you are a widow, why should we mince matters?"

His tone, grave and kindly, mollified her somewhat: she wavered an
instant, and answered.

"It shocked me that you could speak of my niece's selling herself--an
honourable marriage--"

"Just so, Madam, an 'honourably' married woman who does not love her
husband and has not loved him, who has married him because he is wealthy
or of good family--" he deliberately brought his argument within the
range of her comprehension--"is lower in my eyes than the woman who
gives herself for love only, dispensing with ceremony, or who sells
herself for hire, to get her bread."

Fru Boyesen gasped with horror.

"Society!" she murmured, "religion! morality!"

"Society, indeed, dear lady, but neither religion nor morality as I
understand them."

Fru Boyesen was in deep waters, her argumentative powers were not
sufficient to cope with the Doctor, and she knew it, still she tried
once more.

"But Herr Doctor, I don't want her to marry without love, I only want
her to make up her mind to love a man she can marry--and do it soon!"

The Doctor rubbed his hands. He had not been able to resist the
temptation of shocking the good lady; he was often tempted to jolt a
bourgeois mind out of its self-complacent rut. Fru Boyesen's bewildered
and horrified face had amused him intensely, but he realized that to
push the matter further might seriously harm Ragna's cause, so he
contented himself with replying:

"I am sure, Madam, that your niece will not disappoint you in the end;
but if you really desire her welfare, do not urge the matter for the
present, I beg of you. Give the child time--that is a panacea for all
ills, you know. She is very young, and should she marry merely to please
you, her inevitable unhappiness would be heavy on your conscience."

Fru Boyesen retied her bonnet strings but with less firm a touch than
usual. The Professor had frightened her and, for the moment, shaken her
conventional social beliefs; however, she made a last tentative effort.

"Then I am to understand that you positively refuse to use your
influence, Herr Doctor?"

"Most decidedly, Madam--and as you value your future peace of mind and
Ragna's, do not attempt to force her."

"And you advise me to do nothing, to wait?"

"Why not try a change of scene? A journey would probably drive some of
the 'ologies' and 'isms' you object to out of her mind, and she would
very likely come home prepared to settle down."

Fru Boyesen sighed. She was not satisfied with the result of the
interview--it had been so different from what she had expected. She took
her leave, thinking to herself, "Poor man, one can see that he doesn't
know much of the practical side of life! How could he, being a
bachelor?"

Doctor Tommsen, watching her substantial figure retreat down the street,
drummed on the window and said to himself:

"What fools these women are! And the old ones who ought to know better
are always trying to drag the girls into the same miserable mistakes
they have made themselves." He was sorry for Ragna--"They will probably
end by making a fool of her too, one girl can't stand out against the
whole State of Society!"




CHAPTER IX


Fru Boyesen went to Fru Bjork for consolation and over a cup of coffee
discussed the Doctor's refusal.

Fru Bjork was more at a loss than her friend to understand Ragna's
indifference to the advantages of the married state, and she held up her
hands in horror at Fru Boyesen's account of Dr. Tommsen's speeches--it
may be said that they lost nothing in the telling. Sentence by sentence
she repeated them, punctuating them with indignant sniffs, and
appreciative sips at her cup.

Fru Bjork listened, her fat hands clasped on her rotund person, her cap
awry over her kindly face, her eyes wide and round with dismay.

"He says," stated Fru Boyesen, "that we respectable married women sell
ourselves for hire like the women on the streets. He says that marriage
is immoral and irreligious."

"Perhaps," said Fru Bjork, "he is a believer in free love. Try a little
of this seed-cake, my dear, I made it myself."

Fru Boyesen helped herself and continued, her mouth half-full,

"He must be,--anyway he is outrageous, and it's no longer a mystery to
me where Ragna gets her absurd ideas from. If I'd known what sort of a
man he was, I never should have let her study under him. But his name is
so well known! He is so universally respected! I don't understand it at
all!"

Fru Bjork agreed with her--she had the amiable habit of agreeing with
everyone, it saved so much trouble, and Fru Boyesen went on to recount
the rest of the interview. Fru Bjork approved of the suggestion of
sending Ragna away for a time.

"Travelling is good for young girls," she opined, "it takes the nonsense
out of them and when they have seen how things are done in other
countries, they are ready enough to settle down in their own."

Astrid had returned home some months before, and was a great favourite
among the young people. Her vivacity and ready, if rather shallow wit,
her delicate almost affected prettiness, her coquettishness attracted
the young men and her good humour and readiness to oblige made her
friends among the girls. It was natural for her to try to please
everyone, and she exercised her blandishments on all who came near her,
from the servants in the house, to the most important personages of her
social world. She was quite sincere in her desire to please; approbation
was the meat and drink of her existence. She admired Ragna and rather
stood in awe of her attainments, but could not understand her
indifference to social pleasures. Ragna had not cared to tell her more
than the barest outline of the momentous home journey, and if she had,
Astrid would not have understood, for constancy to a dream-memory could
form no part of her spiritual make-up. She was not one to whom any
impression would be lasting; to her, lovers might come and go as
butterflies to a flower,--to all she would give of her smiles, but no
one of them would leave a mark on her soul. Fidelity, to her, would mean
the imposed constraint of public opinion, not the keeping of herself to
one, and one only. She wished to marry, and to marry well,--all things
considered, one man is very like another, when it comes to matrimony,
she thought.

Innumerable times she had fancied herself in love, and each time she had
gone to Ragna with the tale of her infatuation. After the first time or
two, when she had taken the affair seriously, Ragna would listen with an
amused smile,--it was always the same story over again,--and she ceased
to be surprised, when a few days or weeks later, the Star waned and a
new luminary rose above the horizon. Astrid had once said to her:

"One starts out with the idea that men are all different, but when they
have kissed you, you know they are all alike--if one could not see, one
would swear it was always the same man." Ragna had with difficulty
repressed her impulse to protest, "but what's the use?" she thought, and
wisely kept her own counsel.

Finally Astrid had announced her engagement, much to her own
satisfaction. It was an excellent match and her mother was pleased; she
stipulated, however, for a year's delay before the marriage, as Astrid
was barely twenty, and far from strong.

Fru Bjork, then, on the strength of her daughter's conventional social
success, felt herself complacently superior to Fru Boyesen, in the way
that an ordinary hen would feel herself comfortably above one who had
hatched ducklings. She could not but gloat a little over her friend's
discomfiture before she presented a proposition of her own; she
therefore remained silent a few minutes and pressed Fru Boyesen's hand
sympathetically.

Fru Boyesen, who in ordinary circumstances would have resented anything
savouring of commiseration, but who felt too perplexed to think of
anything beyond her present difficulty, presently afforded an opening,
by remarking that though a few months abroad would probably benefit
Ragna and bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind, yet the thing
was impossible; who was there to take her? Fru Boyesen herself had no
desire to set forth on a journey, too many interests and occupations
kept her at home.

Fru Bjork then suggested that Ragna be entrusted to her care.

"I have been thinking," she said, "of taking Astrid to spend the winter
in Italy. The doctor advises it--she is just a little delicate, you
know,--and why should not Ragna come too? She would be company for
Astrid and such a serious, steady girl as she is would give me no
trouble--I should enjoy having her with me."

Fru Boyesen, secretly much pleased by her friend's proposition, would
not seem to seize upon it at once; she agreed to think it over, and the
ladies parted on that understanding.




CHAPTER X


Ragna was now almost twenty-one; she had slightly matured in appearance,
the curves of her figure were rounder and fuller, but her eyes still had
the expression of the idealist, the visionary; she was as prone as ever
to credulity, to taking those with whom she came in contact at their own
valuation.

She had resolutely tried to put the Prince Mirko episode out of her
mind, but with slight success. She had locked Angelescu's sketch of him
away in her writing-case, and rarely allowed herself to look at it, but
she knew it was there, she felt its occult presence as at times she
still felt the presence of Mirko's lips on hers. When, by chance, she
came upon his name in the newspapers the blood would rush to her heart.
Once an illustrated journal had published a portrait of him, accompanied
by a short biographical sketch, and she cut the page out, and laid it
away with her sketch. She had never heard from her dream-hero directly,
but each New Year's day brought her a card from Count Angelescu--He, at
least, still remembered her!

She was at a loss to explain the restlessness that often possessed her.
More often than she dared confess to herself, her work and her studies
bored her; in vain did she try to throw herself entirely into her
serious occupations; emptiness, the vanity of it all, would in spite of
her efforts, rise up and confront her.

The truth was, her physical nature was awake and clamouring for
satisfaction, and the difficulty lay in the fact that having tasted the
caviare of the sophisticated passion of a Don Juan, she could not
content herself with the bread-and-butter of a calm, everyday affection.
Had she never been awakened, even if but partially, to the possibilities
of the latent passion within her, her life would have been calmer, less
eventful and happier--if happiness lie in the absence of upheaving
emotion. Requiring less of life she would have been more easily
satisfied, or would have imagined herself so. The narrow boundaries of
conventional contentment would have shut out the larger horizon of
emotional experience, pain and soul discipline. She would have remained
iron, Destiny was to make her steel tempered by fire.

She was writing in the living-room when her Aunt came in. The
comfortable room, with its low-raftered ceiling and large porcelain
stove looked very cheerful in the glow of the lamp. The heavy red
curtains were drawn across the windows, and the red table-cloth threw a
rosy reflection on the girl's face, as she leaned over her work. Her
hair was like live gold in the strong light of the hanging lamp.

Fru Boyesen came in and seated herself heavily in an upholstered
armchair. Ragna had raised her head on her Aunt's entrance but had not
interrupted her writing. Her Aunt scanned her closely; she had come to
look upon the girl as her own; she enjoyed her presence in the house,
and it was her proprietary feeling that was mortified by the girl's
failure to take advantage of the opportunities offered her. Astrid's
engagement, especially, rankled in the good woman's mind. Here was a
girl not as pretty, not as clever as Ragna, and several months younger,
whose mother had not the social influence and importance she herself
possessed, yet this girl was making an excellent match. It was too
vexatious!

Ragna looked up and meeting her Aunt's eyes, said:

"You have been out a long time, Auntie, did you enjoy yourself?"

"No," answered Fru Boyesen, "at least not very much. I don't see, Ragna,
why you can't go out and enjoy yourself like other young people instead
of moping here all by yourself and spoiling your looks with all your
studying. Now Astrid goes about and has a good time--she is out skating
with her friends now. Why can't you be more like her?"

"So you've been to Fru Bjork's," remarked Ragna quietly.

"I've been where I pleased," said Fru Boyesen, untying her
bonnet-strings and smoothing them between her plump fingers. "I don't
see what it has to do with you where I go. You shouldn't take me up so.
I think you are a very strange girl--and Fru Bjork can't understand you
any better than I do," she added.

"I do wish, Auntie, that you would not discuss me with Fru Bjork, or
anyone else."

"Hoighty, toighty, Miss! I shall discuss whom I please, and if you will
be so peculiar and different from other girls, you must expect people to
talk."

"It's none of 'people's' business what I choose to do or not to do,"
returned Ragna, making little scribbles on the sheet of paper before
her. When her Aunt came in, she had been asking herself if she were not
really foolish in holding herself thus aloof from her fellows, but at
the hint of public criticism on her actions she was up in arms again.

"Ragna, you are positively hopeless; I don't know how a niece of mine
can have so little sense! If you lived in a hut in the woods or on the
Desert of Sahara, you might do as you like, but here one has to consider
the opinion of one's neighbours."

"Who is my neighbour?" quoted Ragna softly, smiling in spite of herself.
She knew well that to her Aunt, "public opinion" consisted of the
prejudices of four or five of the foremost families of Christiania;
outside of that charmed circle she had a fine disregard as to what
people might think, in fact she expected people of less importance to
follow her example and conform to her opinions.

The smile was unwise in that it irritated the elder lady, already
ruffled by the unsuccessful visit to Dr. Tommsen.

"Oh, you may well laugh in your sleeve at me, Miss Know-it-all! The day
will come when you will realise that I am in the right--and it may be
too late!"

Ragna made no reply; she returned to her writing and the scratching of
her pen and the ticking of the clock filled the silence. Fru Boyesen,
after one or two ineffectual efforts, rose from her chair and left the
room.

"It's no use," she said to herself as she puffed up the stairs--she had
grown very stout of late,--"she is quite impossible. I've more than half
a mind to pack her off with the Bjorks. Else Bjork is not very clever,
but she has brought Astrid up to be a credit to her and I think I'll let
her try her hand with Ragna. I've been a fool to let her have her own
way so long,--her head is full of the stuff these atheistic professors
pour into it. I'll let her go; it can't do any harm, anyhow."

If she had entertained a secret hope that Ragna would elect to stay at
home with her, and incidentally conform to her wishes in general, she
was disappointed, for Ragna, when the proposition was broached to her,
hailed it with delight. It would afford a welcome relief, she thought,
from the growing monotony of her self-chosen occupations, which
consistency forbade her to change of her own accord, and would at the
same time remove her from her Aunt's ever more frequent innuendoes and
reproaches, besides taking her to Italy, the land of her dreams. Of late
the German Romanticists had formed the subject of her study and her mind
was, as so many northern minds were at that time, possessed by the
"_Drang nach Italien_."

There was much to be arranged for the journey, as Fru Bjork, in spite of
her many travels was always flustered by a fresh start; Astrid was of no
practical use and Ragna too much taken up with her personal
preparations, and also too inexperienced a traveller to be of much help
to her fussy chaperone. Fru Bjork was therefore glad to welcome an
addition to the party in the shape of a spinster of uncertain age,
Estelle Hagerup, who was expected to be the balance-wheel of the
expedition.

Fru Boyesen devoted all her energies to getting Ragna ready, and
supplied her with an amount of luggage remarkable for its bulk and
variety, every possible contingency of sickness and health being
provided for. Estelle Hagerup boldly risked the good lady's displeasure
by declaring that at least half must be left behind, and herself
undertook to separate the sheep from the goats by weeding out all but
the indispensable articles. It was the reverse of Penelope's web, for
what the uncompromising Estelle undid by day, Fru Boyesen and Ragna
restored by stealth at night, and on her next visit, Estelle would find
nobby parcels and piles of books more or less skilfully concealed
beneath the clothing in the boxes--and the struggle would begin again.
Fru Boyesen, having never left her native country, fondly imagined that
mustard-plasters, rolls of flannel, bottles of spirit and sundry other
necessities would be unobtainable in a strange land. Fröken Hagerup
heartlessly rejected all these things, but Fru Boyesen was not to be
out-done and the very last day after the boxes were closed and locked,
Estelle caught her stuffing two large parcels into the shawl-strap--one
containing a goodly provision of soap, the other, two bags, one of
flax-seed for poultices, the other of camomile flowers.

When, eventually, the time for starting came, Fru Boyesen wished she had
never thought of letting Ragna go out from under her control. "Else
Bjork is too soft, she will spoil her," she thought, "and the girl will
come back worse than when she left. I have been criminally weak with
her, but she'll ride roughshod over poor Else!"

As the luggage was being carried out of the house, an impulse seized her
to have it brought back again; then she chid herself for her
inconsistency.

"The little minx has upset me entirely! This is the first time in my
life I haven't known my own mind!" Therefore to hide the sinking of
heart she felt at the prospect of imminent loneliness, she assumed such
a stern and forbidding aspect that half Christiania, assembled to see
the party off, was certain that Ragna was being banished for some
heinous offence.

Ragna kissed her Aunt good-bye with a light heart,--was she not faring
forth to the land of her dreams?--And the separation would be but for a
few months.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Ingeborg received her sister's letter announcing the prospective
journey, she burst into tears, much to the amazement of the family.

"Ragna is going, we shall never see her again!" she sobbed.

Lars Andersen reproved her sternly.

"Stop this nonsense, Ingeborg!" he ordered, "I will have none of this
foolish superstition in my house. The future rests with God."

But though he spoke boldly, yet his heart sank. Ingeborg's predictions
had a strange way of coming true.




BOOK II




CHAPTER I


"Astrid," said Ragna, "do make haste! It will be luncheon time before we
get out, and you can perfectly well finish your letter this evening."

Astrid looked up from her writing-board, nibbling her pen-holder
reflectively. She was sitting near one window of the room, and by the
other stood Ragna, pulling on her gloves impatiently. They had been in
Rome a few weeks, and the first fervour of sight-seeing over, had fallen
into a go-as-you-please sort of existence. Fru Bjork left the girls
largely to their own devices; the long flight of stairs to be climbed
after every outing so tired her legs and shortened her breath, that she
declined to face them more than once a day, and she had conscientious
scruples against eating in a restaurant, when her meals must be paid
for, in any case, at the pension. Estelle Hagerup preferred to wander
about alone; she would start out valiantly in the morning, her hat tied
firmly on her sleek head, her skirt looped up in festoons by a series of
flaps and buttons, displaying her sturdy broad-toed boots. The very
glasses perched on her prominent nose gave an earnest inquiring
expression to her face. Night-fall would see her home again, tired,
dusty, radiant and quite unable to give a connected account of her
peregrinations. She would blissfully say:

"I am drinking in the atmosphere, I am saturating myself with the
essence of Rome!" and the word "Rome" as she said it with an awed
expression and bated breath suggested a hoary cavern of antiquity,
haunted by the ghosts of buried Cæsars. Her short-sighted eyes would
grow round and she would clasp her large bony hands ecstatically.
Good-natured Fru Bjork smiled at her enthusiasm and if the girls made
fun of her at times, they did it pleasantly.

Astrid was inclined to be lazy; she enjoyed the sun and the warmth, and
the picturesque figures on the Spanish Stairs, but museums and picture
galleries bored her, and the churches, she declared, gave her the
creeps. So it fell out that Ragna who wished to do her sight-seeing
after a methodical plan, generally found herself alone. Armed with a
guide book she began at the beginning, as it were, visiting first the
most ancient ruins and relics, in their order, working on down to modern
times. It disconcerted her to find ancient and modern mingled--as they
so often were,--and at the Pantheon she resolutely shut her eyes to the
monuments of the House of Savoy, until such time as she should have
reached their place in history. It will be seen that her method involved
no little difficulty and much returning over the same ground. It seemed
pure lunacy to Astrid, who objected to being dragged over and over again
to the same place to observe some addition or later adaptation which she
had been forbidden to inspect on her first visit.

"It would be so easy to see it all at once," she plaintively protested,
but Ragna was adamant.

Astrid therefore pleaded her delicate health and the overfatigue caused
by such strenuous sight-seeing as an excuse to remain at home, where she
composed lengthy epistles to her fiancé with whom she was comfortably,
if not passionately, in love.

On this particular morning she was evolving a description of her
impressions during a drive on the Pincio the afternoon before. She felt
lazily content with the world, herself, and things in general and had no
wish to bestir herself.

"I wish you weren't so awfully energetic, Ragna," she said.

"Well, I couldn't sit down in Rome and bite my pen all day, as if there
were nothing better to do,--you might as well be in Christiania! Come,
get on your things!"

"What are you going to see to-day?"

"I'm not going to see anything this morning. I have some shopping to do
in the Corso."

Astrid's eyes brightened, then she shook her head.

"I must finish my letter first."

"Oh, nonsense! Edvard can wait a few hours!"

"You always say that--but then you don't know what it is to be engaged,"
she glanced at the pretty ring decorating her hand. "You see, Edvard
gets so huffy if I'm not regular in my correspondence, and I haven't
written to him for three days."

Ragna shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, very well! I suppose I must wait. Do be as quick as you can,
Astrid, the morning is almost all gone."

She stood drumming on the window-sill, looking down into the busy Piazza
Montecitorio far below. A row of "_botti_" stretched across the sunny
side, the drivers carrying on an animated conversation among themselves
and with one or two flower sellers. The old woman who kept the
news-stand at the corner, alternately sorted her newspapers and warmed
her fingers over her scaldino, for the air was crisp, it being early in
January. Through the Piazza streamed a motley procession of tourists,
red-covered Baedeker in hand,--priests in cassock and beaver hat,
_popolini_ and girls, and some _Trasteverine_ with coloured stays over
white _camicie_, and strings of coral about their necks. Ragna watched
them all with fascinated eyes. The variegated Roman crowds were a
constant source of interest and delight to her; she could not but feel
the charm of their casual, seemingly untrammelled existence. The Romans,
she thought, had not a worry in the world, their happy care-free faces
drew her; even in the beggar's professional whine she observed a lack of
real distress--all seemed to float lightly on the surface of Life,
passing the under-currents, the sunken rocks, skimming carelessly over
the shallows. She remembered a boy she had seen the day before, breaking
his fast on a hunch of bread and a glass of sour wine; his bare feet
protruded from tattered trouser-legs, his elbows showed through rents in
the sleeves of his ragged jacket. He was a flower-vendor and she had
stopped to choose a bunch of flowers from his basket. When she paid him,
he thanked her with a brilliant smile, displaying his white teeth, and
in halting Italian she asked him what made him so happy.

"Happy, Signorina? Of course I am happy,--the sun is warm and I have my
bread and wine--!"

It was little reason enough, in all conscience, thought Ragna; she
wondered what made these people satisfied with the passing sensation,
oblivious of ulterior good or ill, and she envied them.

Her eyes wandered to the clock on the Parliament buildings opposite,--it
was almost eleven. She turned half angrily to Astrid who was gazing into
space, still chewing her pen-holder.

"Haven't you finished yet?"

Astrid started and a look of contrition came over her face.

"Oh! I'm awfully sorry Ragna, but I just can't write quickly to-day.
Don't wait for me, there's a dear! I'll go out with you this afternoon.
I'll be ready by then, I truly will!"

Ragna pushed out her underlip, but made no answer; she merely shut the
door quite firmly behind her as she left the room. She descended the
long stairs and crossed the Piazza, shaking her head at the eager
_vetturini_ one or two of whom rattled after her cracking their whips,
in hopes of a fare. She walked along resolutely, seemingly unconscious
of the attention she attracted. She wore part of her thick golden hair
down her back where it hung well below the waist, and the rest wreathed
in massive plaits about her head. Men of the people often spoke to her
as they passed, praising her "_cappelli d'oro_," calling her "_bella
biondina_" and "_simpaticona_," but she had become accustomed to it, and
took no notice of them. In her heart of hearts she was flattered by the
simple homage which had nothing of either insolence or rudeness.

She walked on enjoying the crisp air, for though the sun was warm, snow
lay on the Albon Hills and the breath of it gave a keen edge to the
breeze. She was in the Corso, standing, looking in a shop window, when
she saw, reflected in the plate glass, a man who had passed her suddenly
turn on his heel and come to her side; at the same moment a voice,
strangely familiar, asked her in French:

"Have I not the pleasure of addressing Mdlle. Andersen?"

She turned and met the eyes of Prince Mirko. The colour left her cheeks
and she felt a suffocating sensation at her heart. She could not answer
him, her voice seemed strangled in her throat. The Prince continued:

"Or is it Madame Something?"

The red came back to her cheeks with a rush, and recovering the use of
her tongue, she murmured,

"Your Highness! Here?"

"Yes," he answered, "I'm not a ghost, but I'm not a 'Highness'
either,--I left that at home; I am plain 'Count Romanoff,' for the
present. But you are still Mademoiselle Andersen?"

She nodded affirmatively.

"What shall I say? That I am glad? But that would be selfish--poor
unfortunate man that you have not married!" He laughed easily.

Ragna smiled; his playful assumption of comradeship put her at her ease;
the ice was broken, it was a tacit resumption of their friendly relation
before the far away evening of the kiss. Perhaps he had forgotten that
episode, his cheerful friendliness of manner gave no intimation of any
such recollection, and Ragna felt gladly assured that such was the case.
The thought completed her composure, and she replied,

"But neither have you married, Your--"

"No! No!" he interrupted, "don't call me that! In the first place I am
here incognito, and then I have always liked to think that to at least
one charming person in the world, I am just myself, just 'Mirko.' We
were comrades on the ship--let us begin again where we left off--shall
we?"

Her eyes interrogated him intently, but she still saw no sign of an
embarrassing memory, so she allowed herself to smile. In point of fact,
he had no distinct recollection of those days on the _Norje_, nor of
their ending; many new faces had come between, in the intervening years.
He merely remembered Ragna as a charming child who had helped while
away the hours on the little steamer, and the finding of her here in
Rome was a windfall, when he most needed distraction. His eye followed
approvingly the slightly more developed curves of her figure and the
shining ripples of her hair. He had been to Monte Carlo and luck had
been against him, even to his father's hearing of the escapade, and it
had been intimated to him that a month or so of rustication incognito
before coming home, in order to give the paternal wrath time to cool,
would materially aid in the restoration of peace. Ragna's emotion at his
sudden appearance laid a flattering unction to his soul; her northern,
and to him, unusual beauty attracted him newly, and he said to himself,

"Unlucky at cards, lucky in love--_chi lo sa?_"

"Let us move on," he said to Ragna, "we are attracting attention as well
as stopping the way. You will let me walk with you, and you shall tell
me how it is you happen to be here."

Ragna found herself walking beside him as in a dream. In reply to his
questions she told him of her journey to Italy with Fru Bjork and
Astrid; she described Fröken Hagerup and her peculiarities, to his great
amusement. Something in him seemed to draw out the wit and humour in
her--or perhaps it was the excitement of the unexpected meeting,--in any
case she talked to him as she had never talked to anyone in her life.

So they walked on until they reached the Piazza del Popolo, and Ragna
looking at her watch found, to her horror and surprise, that it was
half-past twelve.

"And I never heard the midday gun!" she exclaimed.

The large square was deserted; a beggar or two sat eating in the sun by
the fountains. Even the busy Corso seemed empty.

"I must hurry home at once," said Ragna, turning swiftly.

"It is a long walk,--why go back? Why not celebrate our reunion by
lunching with me?" suggested Mirko.

"Oh, no!" she shook her head, "that would never do! They would all be
anxious about me if I did not turn up--and think what Fru Bjork would
say when she heard I had been lunching with a young man!"

"But why should she hear of it? You can say you have been sight-seeing,
too far away for you to get back in time. Make any excuse you like, but
do be good! Come!" His voice was like that of a spoilt child begging for
a new toy.

"Astrid knows I'm not sight-seeing to-day. I told her before I went
out."

He observed that she appeared not to resent the idea of a mild
deception--or was it that she wished to ignore the suggestion?

"You are afraid of me!" he said teasingly. "Believe me, I am not an
ogre!"

She rose at once to the bait.

"Afraid? Why should I be afraid? I say 'no' because it is impossible."
Her tone was final.

Mirko laughed.

"'When a woman won't, she won't, and there's an end on't!'" he quoted.
"At least one hears so. What is it, obstinacy or propriety as
personified by your compatriots?"

"In this case it would amount to the same."

"Not in the least; obstinacy is hopeless, but Mrs. Grundy may be got
around."

"How so?" asked Ragna.

"In the first place, there is no reason at all why Mrs. Grundy should
become aware of my existence--in the second place, there are ways of
placating that worthy dame. I know something of that," he smiled to
himself reminiscently. "However, that is beside the point,--prevention
is better than cure, besides being simpler. No, little friend," he
emphasized the word, "let our friendship be free from outside
interference--let us keep it to our two selves."

Ragna thought that too delicate to hint of their difference in station,
he was taking this way of urging on her the private character of their
acquaintanceship,--of telling her that he did not care to be thrust into
a bourgeois _milieu_. That he should desire to prolong the chance
renewal of their comradeship beyond the hour, flattered her, and she was
too innocent-minded and too accustomed to the free intercourse between
northern men and maidens to see any real harm in acceding to his
suggestion. "Concealment," she told herself, "did not necessarily imply
deceit, so why expose herself to the curiosity of Astrid and Estelle
Hagerup, why hedge about this unexpected adventure with the formality
that must of necessity follow on disclosure, when she might so easily
keep it to herself?" Quite unconsciously she was actuated by a slight
jealousy of Astrid; in spite of herself, the assured triumph of Astrid's
career as symbolised in her engagement, the consequence it gave her in
the eyes of others, rankled in Ragna's spirit. The thought that a prince
sought her friendship raised her in her own eyes and gave her a sort of
moral vertigo. If Mirko had shown the slightest sign of remembering that
he had once kissed her, her pride would have been up in arms to defend
her, but he seemed to remember her only as a merry comrade and it was
as such that he sought her society. He saw her hesitation and pressed
his point.

"Let me show you the charm of Italy, you will never learn it alone.
Italy to be understood must be seen through two pairs of eyes--and you
can always dismiss me the minute you are tired of me. I should so like
to show you Rome,--the Rome I love--There is no reason why anyone should
know, you have told me yourself that you go about alone. You don't know
how useful I can make myself if I try!"

Ragna laughed.

"I confess you convey more the impression of a 'lily of the field,' than
of an exponent of the beauty of utility!"

"Oh, but you've never seen me really hard at work! Nor has anyone else,
for the matter of that," he added to himself.

"Then what is it, exactly, you expect to do for me?"

"I shall be your guide, philosopher and friend. '_Sous les remparts de
Rome et sous ses vastes plaines!_'" he declaimed, drawing himself up.

Ragna's eyes sparkled mischievously,

"I believe I should make a better cicerone than you, if it comes to
that!"

"Oh, that is quite beside the point! It is unspeakably barbarian to
insist on guide-book accuracy. I shall supply what is much more
important: the atmosphere."

"That is what Fröken Hagerup says she is absorbing."

"She will never know anything about it. Haven't I told you it takes two
to see it?"

"How so? One to pour it out and one to drink it in?"

"I didn't remember you so flippant--have you lost all respect for your
elders?"

"The child is ready to learn," said Ragna, assuming an expression of
becoming meekness. Indeed she hardly recognised her sedate self in this
new and agreeable sensation of buoyancy.

"Now," said Prince Mirko, changing his tone, "where shall I meet you
again? This afternoon--"

"Is out of the question; I must go out with Fru Bjork and Astrid."

"Then to-morrow morning meet me at the entrance to the Palatino."

"But I haven't said that I would come."

"Oh, yes, you will."

"You take too much for granted."

"I don't think so."

"Then I shan't come," said Ragna, nettled by his air of complacent
certainty.

"I shall be there, and we shall see what we shall see," was his calm
rejoinder.

They had reached the Piazza Colonna, and Mirko paused, hat in hand.

"I shall come no further--until to-morrow, then!" He turned and left her
without waiting for a reply. Ragna watched his lithe figure as he strode
easily across the open space. She felt dissatisfied with herself and
angry with him for this somewhat cavalier leave-taking, and his
confident assumption that she would do as he said.

"What does he take me for?" she asked herself as she sped with rapid
steps towards her belated luncheon. "I shall not go to meet him, no I
shall not."

She entered the dining-room of the pension, flushed and breathless from
the stairs, and found it nearly empty, most of the guests having already
finished. Fru Bjork, who liked to take things easily, was still busy
with a slice of cold meat, and Astrid picked daintily at an orange with
slender fingers.

"Wherever have you been, so long, Ragna?" she asked.

"Did you get the photographs in the Corso?"

"Yes,--or at least no," answered Ragna in some confusion. "It was such a
lovely morning I went for a walk instead. I thought I would leave the
photographs till you could come with me to choose them." Lying did not
come easily to her, and her awkwardness would have betrayed her at once
to a keen observer, but Fru Bjork was too unobservant to notice it and
Astrid felt confused herself, owing to her failure to be ready to go out
as she had promised.

Ragna sat down in her place, removing her gloves as she did so. She
poured herself a glass of water, but her hand shook and the water
streamed over the table cloth. Fru Bjork, seeing it, said kindly,

"My dear, you should not run up the stairs so fast,--it is bad for the
heart. You are too young to think about such things, but when you are my
age you will know."

Ragna blushed, thinking of the real reason of her excitement, and the
good lady continued anxiously:

"And how flushed your face is, my dear! Oh really, really, you must be
more careful!"

She was interrupted by Ragna's other neighbour, an old Swedish lady,
whose long nose seemed to rest on her chin and that again on her
voluminous bosom tightly sheathed in striped silk, and adorned by a
cameo brooch and a frill of lace that had seen fresher days. She laid
her mittened hand on Ragna's arm, and said:

"My sweet one, will you choose an orange, the very nicest one, for me?
My poor eyes are so bad that I am afraid to trust them." She had drawn
the fruit dish over to her and appeared to be trying the efficacy of her
nose in selecting fruit.

Ragna picked out an orange at random and laid it on the lady's
plate,--the interruption was not unwelcome to her.

"Ah, that is very nice indeed, my dear. Thank you so much! And are you
quite sure it is the very best? Well then I know you will like to peel
it for me!"

Astrid leant across the table, saying,

"I'll peel it for you while Ragna eats her luncheon."

"Thank you, my dear," said the old lady, a little stiffly.

"You are very kind, but I think the other young lady would have done it
more carefully. Young folk are so apt to be inconsiderate, nowadays!"
She sighed heavily. Presently she addressed herself to Fru Bjork.

"Don't you think that young people are apt to be inconsiderate
nowadays?" she inquired raising her voice. Astrid winked at Ragna; the
old lady was their pet antipathy; Astrid had christened her the "Old
Woman of the Sea." She always came to the table first and left it last,
and managed to keep her neighbours busily employed most of the time.

Fru Bjork answered slowly, a little streamer of salad waving at the
corner of her mouth.

"I don't agree with you; I have not found them inconsiderate."

"Then you have been more fortunate than I. I must say, however, that the
young men are worse than the young women. Only the other day I asked a
young man to give me _the_ piece of chicken in a fricassee, and he gave
me the neck."

Astrid stifled a wild giggle in her serviette. The old lady turned to
her.

"Are you choking? Get someone to thump your back! But there has been
much worse--" she again trained her eye on Fru Bjork,--"just think, last
night I never closed an eye, for two thoughtless young men who had the
room next to mine, were packing up to go, and they dragged their heavy
boxes about and made such a noise that I couldn't sleep at all! It was
most inconsiderate of them towards one so much older and so far from
strong!"

Astrid's choking became violent. Her room was next to that of the young
men, and they had made such a noise that at last she had knocked on the
partition asking them to be quiet. They had answered, begging her
pardon, explaining that they had been trying to wake the old lady whose
sonorous snoring made it impossible to sleep. And in fact, the snoring
had been a running accompaniment to the various thumps and bangs, and
had continued on, triumphant and undiminished.

"You had better go to your room, Astrid," said her mother. She had heard
the story, and in her kindness of heart was afraid of hurting the old
lady's feelings.

Ragna rose also, glad of an excuse to go.

"Oh," gasped Astrid, as they left the room, "that old woman will kill me
yet. 'So inconsiderate of them!'" she mocked.

"Hush," said Ragna, laughing, "she will hear you!"

"I don't care if she does!" said Astrid, "horrid old mole! She told me
I looked consumptive, and that my colour was a hectic flush. If she can
see that much she ought to be able to help herself at table!"

Ragna went to her room and sat down on her bed. She felt all in a whirl.
The Prince in Rome! And he wished her to be his friend! She was uneasily
conscious that she should have spoken of the meeting to Fru Bjork--but
the Prince did not wish it. "I suppose on account of his being
incognito," she told herself--but reason told her that his official
presence would have rendered any intercourse impossible.

"It's like a fairy-tale come true, to have seen him again," she thought,
"but I will not meet him to-morrow. Of course there would be no harm if
I did. I am old enough to take care of myself,--but I shall not, it
would be better not."

She was still going over in her mind the conversation of the morning,
when Astrid and Fru Bjork entered, ready for the drive. Ragna started
guiltily and Astrid pointed a derisive finger:

"Behold the punctual Ragna! Who's late this time, Miss?"

"I'll be ready in a second," said Ragna flying about the room, while Fru
Bjork subsided to a chair, settling her bonnet strings under her double
chin.

"There, there!" she said in her comfortable way, "don't hurry so,
there's no harm done!"

"Now I'm ready!" cried Ragna.

"Why, my child," exclaimed Fru Bjork, "you have one grey glove and one
tan one, and you have put your green coat over your blue frock!"

Astrid giggled, "The air of Rome must have gone to your head!"

Ragna, much confused, rectified her mistakes, and the party set out.
They drove to the Doria Pamphilj gardens and afterwards to the
Janiculum. Fru Bjork stopped the carriage and they got out and walked.
Ragna loved the view from that point better than any other she had seen;
the huge mass of St. Peter's, towering like a Titan above the city
dwarfing all else by the symmetrical immensity of the dome, fascinated
and held her. It dominated humanity, she thought even as it dominated
Rome,--the Mother Church, Mistress of the World, rising triumphant on
the ruins of the past.

She would willingly have stood there for hours, but the early winter
dusk was falling; Astrid shivered and Fru Bjork said "Home."

The return drive through the Trastevere was a delight to Ragna, though
Astrid turned up her delicate nose at the variety of smells, and Fru
Bjork commented at length on the unhealthfulness of defective drainage.
To Ragna it seemed a fairy world, and the hour after sunset, "blind
man's holiday" brought out all the wonder and mystery of it, throwing a
kindly veil over dirt and sordid details. Lights twinkled in the winding
streets, and as they passed Hilda's Tower they saw the glow of the lamp
in the shrine. And beneath it all, there ran as an undercurrent in
Ragna's mind, the Prince in Rome!




CHAPTER II


When Ragna opened her eyes the next morning, she had the impression of
opening them to a new life, different from that of yesterday; there was
something to look forward to,--just what, her sleepy memory refused to
say. Then as she stirred and sat up, it came back to her, and again she
declared: "I shall not go to meet him, it would be foolish!"

But she dressed with unusual care, and went to the dining-room for
breakfast, afraid of finding Astrid ready to accompany her, and at the
same time almost hoping for it. Astrid, however, had elected to spend
the morning in bed; she had got a chill, she said, from the drive the
day before, and yawning, buried her face in the sleeve of her blue
flannel bed-jacket. So Ragna started out alone, and resolutely set her
face towards the Vatican. She had gone but a short distance, however,
when she wheeled about, and walked as rapidly in the opposite direction.

"It can do no harm if I meet him this once," she argued. Then, "I
suppose I am a fool." A panic seized her, suppose he should not come,
after all? As she turned the end of the Forum, she saw the graceful
figure of Prince Mirko coming to meet her.

"I knew it!" he cried joyously, waving his hat like a school-boy. "I
knew you would not disappoint me!"

His gaiety was infectious, and Ragna's laugh echoed his. He took the
red guide-book from her hand, and held it up accusingly.

"Why have you brought this? I told you, you would not need one with me!"
he cried, stuffing the offending book into his pocket.

They passed through the turnstile, and strolled up the path in the wake
of the official guide. The bright Roman sunshine illuminated the Forum
below, gilding the columns and casting short blue shadows in the
excavations. Overhead, the sky was a deep rich blue, and the air was
charged with the peculiar sweetness of approaching Spring. The guide
walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, humming an air from Rigoletto:
"_Questao quella per me pari sono_,"--Mirko hummed it also, then broke
into "_La donno è mobile_," giving it with rollicking voice.

Ragna smiled at him.

"In the opera it is the man who is 'mobile,' in spite of what the song
says!"

"Oh, no, the song is quite right--when a man is openly unfaithful, it is
only in answer to a secret defection on the part of the woman. Any
intelligent woman who wishes to keep a man, can do it--you can always be
sure that it is really the woman's fault if a man strays in his
allegiance."

"That is an extremely convenient theory," said Ragna, laughing, "but it
is a poor rule that won't work both ways. Would you make the man
responsible for infidelity on the part of the woman?"

"Oh, that is a very different matter!"

"Why should it be?"

"You will not pretend, I suppose, that a woman is exactly the same as a
man? The difference between them alters the whole aspect of the case."

"Oh!" said Ragna, "you are incorrigible, you twist and turn so,--you
will never meet me fairly!"

"The infidelity of man," continued Mirko, "is different in its very
essence from that of woman,--it is quite possible for a man to be
constant when he is apparently most unfaithful--the superficial change
only enhances the charm of the real affection; he never tires of coming
back to it,--if he were never to leave it, it would pall on him."

"Why will you be so paradoxical?"

"It is not I who am paradoxical,--it is life."

They were so absorbed in their conversation, that the guide found no way
of attracting their attention; in vain did he hem and haw, and scrape
his foot on the gravel.

"They are most certainly a '_viaggio di nozze_,'" he thought, "or
perhaps '_fidanzati_'--as such they will be generous."

Finally, as they came to the entrance to the ruins, he stepped before
them with a commanding gesture.

"This, Signori, is the gallery where the Empress sat with her ladies.
You see it overlooks the street where the chariots passed up to the
palace. The palace itself was built out over the way, and the people
went under it as under a bridge."

"See," said Mirko, "can you not imagine it,--the beautiful gallery, with
its marble balustrade, hung with woven carpets and silken
draperies--there before you in the sunlight? Do you not see the Empress,
beautiful, stately, robed in purple, gems and gold-dust in her dark
hair, wonderful jewels on her neck and arms? There are the ladies,--the
proud dark one just behind her, the fair girl leaning over the
balustrade at her side, with the gold of the sun on her hair, on her
white dress, and the other three, laughing together, over there to the
left? The slave-girls are holding peacock-feather fans to shield their
royal mistress, and the slave-boys, beautiful, fair-haired captives,
have brought baskets of fruit and sweets. And down in the street below,
what a crowd, what a riot of colour! The Cæsar on his white horse with
the gold trappings--do you catch the gleam of his burnished helmet, of
his cuirass? He turns his head haughtily, and gathers up the reins in
his hand; his short sword clatters against his thigh as his horse moves
on. There, just behind him, comes the centurion of his escort, brave to
see in his flaunting scarlet cloak, and the legionaries follow, like so
many animated bronze statues. See--the fair waiting-maid by the Empress
has dropped a rose to the centurion--he looks up and smiles--his teeth
flash white--the slaves, carrying jars and baskets on their heads, have
flattened themselves against the walls, to let the procession go by,--it
moves like a glittering snake up the narrow way.--Hark! the salute of
the palace guard, spear rattling on shield, and the shout 'Ave Cæsar!'
It echoes under the vaulted way--and all Rome is in that cry!"

Mirko was flushed with enthusiasm; he threw back his head, and the
clear-cut features of his classic face glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he
seemed the very incarnation of that "lust of the eye and pride of life,"
of that "grandeur that was Rome."

As he spoke, Ragna saw the pageant of those far off days unrolled before
her. She felt the throbbing of all the passionate life of old, where but
a few minutes before there had been but moss-grown stone and crumbling
ruins. He had laid a spell on her; she was for the moment, by virtue of
his imagination, and its dramatic expression, actually living in the
past, feeling its reality.

And so it continued throughout the morning. In the long paved
underground passage way, Mirko showed her Cæsar, carried along in his
litter, returning from his theatre. She saw the flickering light of the
torches, heard the sandalled footsteps of the slaves,--their heavy
breathing, the creak of the poles. And at the foot of the stairs she saw
the sudden confusion,--the dark-cloaked assassins stealing from the
shadow, she heard the shrieks, the cries of "Treason!" "Murder!" She saw
in glimpses between the surging figures, the white-faced Emperor,
struggling from his litter,--his unwieldy form leapt upon, borne back
and down, then blows,--a gurgling groan. She saw the overturned litter,
the crumpled body on the floor, the widening pool of blood,--then flight
to the long flare of torches snatched from the trembling slaves, then
darkness, and the alarm.

She saw the gay crowds, trooping into the Circus Maximus, the arrival in
procession of Cæsar, æditor of the games. She watched breathless the
speeding chariots, and carried out of herself, with flushed cheeks and
shining eyes, joined in the thunderous applause which acclaimed the
victor,--the hoarse roar which must, it seemed, shake the very
foundations of Rome.

When it was all over, and the guide had beamingly pocketed his _mancia_
and they were in the street again, Ragna drew a long breath.

"It has been wonderful!"

"Then you are satisfied with your cicerone? You are convinced that a
guide-book is unnecessary?"

"Oh," she answered, "the book makes it all into a cemetery,--or a table
of dates,--but you have made Rome live.--It can never be the same now,
as it was before; I have been there, I have seen it, it is part of
me,--and without you I should never have known anything of it at all.
How do you do it? How do you bring it all to life?"

Mirko smiled, well pleased with the result of his effort and with
himself.

"I have been there."

"Been there! How?"

"I was once a Roman, I feel it, I know it!"

"Yes," she answered, "I think you must have been,--I can feel that you
have been--you have made me feel it."

They were silent for a few minutes, and Ragna repeated:

"It has been wonderful!"

When they had parted, and Ragna found herself alone, the wonder of it
grew on her. How blind she had been until the Prince opened her eyes!
She was very glad that she had come, all her half-formulated scruples
were laid at rest. How foolish she had been to imagine any possible
harm!--What could be more innocent or more delightful than their
informal comradeship? He was quite right too, in wishing to keep it all
to themselves. Astrid would not, could not understand, still less so
good, prosaic-minded Fru Bjork, and as for Estelle Hagerup! Ragna
laughed scornfully, as there rose before her mental vision the
grasshopper-like silhouette of that strenuous spinster.

At luncheon, looking about her at the commonplace faces of her fellow
sojourners, she could not repress a secret movement of vanity.

"How many of these," she thought, "would give their eyes to spend a
morning like mine,--and with a friend like mine!" She even pitied
Astrid,--poor Astrid, who had never known a Prince!

Estelle Hagerup announced a discovery--she had a voice.

"My dears," she said with pride, "what a voice! Just as clear as
crystal, and very powerful--and to think I never knew of it before!"

"How did you find it out, Estelle?" asked Ragna and Astrid together.

"I was standing on the top tier of the Colosseum, and the impulse came
over me to sing--so I lifted up my voice and sang. I wish you could have
been there to hear! A _custode_ came running at once and was much
impressed. He said he had never heard anything like it in his life. I
gave him a lira, and he said '_grazie Contessa_.' He refused to leave me
after that, and waited till I was ready to go with the greatest
deference."

"Are you thinking of the operatic stage?" asked Astrid wickedly.

"Perhaps that may come later, when I shall have acquired a repertory."

"You will have to study," said the old Swedish lady. "There was a young
woman here last winter studying music, and she sang scales three hours a
day; she had a room next mine. I should advise you to go to
Florence--they say there are better singing-masters there."

"I shall not sing scales," said Estelle firmly.

"I thought one always had to," put in Ragna.

"Not with a voice like mine; my voice is far beyond scales."

"That is very satisfactory, dear Fröken," said the old lady. "My dear,"
this to Ragna, "will you give me the largest tartlet,--the one with the
most jam on it?"

"I hope," remarked Fru Bjork, "that you will do nothing so silly as to
train for the stage, Estelle." She was about to add, "at your age, too,"
but refrained.

Estelle simpered.

"Why should it be silly, Fru Bjork, if I feel it to be my vocation? Why
should I not give utterance to the sacred fire that is within me? Is it
not my duty to humanity?"

Fru Bjork found no answer to this, and held her peace, but Ragna was
more daring.

"Do you think you have a stage presence, Estelle?" she asked.

"Why not? I am tall--besides, it is much more important to have voice
and temperament. I feel it my mission to redeem the stage. Why do you
ask me such a question?"

Ragna was saved from answering by the old lady.

"My dear! My dear! Pick me out something before they carry the fruit
around! Last evening that man with the whiskers at the end of the table
took the last banana, before I had a chance."

Ragna rose from the table in disgust. She longed to be back in the past
again with Prince Mirko--all these present things seemed so vulgar and
common by contrast, and yet until now, they had amused her! She looked
about the dining-room and despised the men in it. A stout German with
his napkin tucked in at the neck, sprawled over his plate, emitting
hideous grunts and smacks, at the other end of the room, two
well-nourished Englishmen sat with their families like self-satisfied
roosters with their feathered following. At her own table, an anæmic
and dreamy-eyed art-student played with his dessert, an Italian
Commendatore with white whiskers, and a rotund waistcoat, beamed on his
neighbours, and a gentleman with marvellous tight striped trousers, a
still more marvellous moustache and a flamboyant necktie, was lighting a
cigarette.

"How vulgar, how horrid they are!" thought Ragna.




CHAPTER III


It seemed to Ragna that she had opened her eyes on a new Heaven and a
new Earth. As the days went on and lengthened into weeks, she grew so
dependent on the companionship of Prince Mirko, that if a day passed
without her seeing him, she felt blank and as though defrauded of a
pleasure that was hers by right. A curious change, too, had taken place
in her mental or rather sentimental attitude, for whereas at first, she
had dreaded his recalling the, to her, unforgetable episode of the last
evening on the _Norje_, she now felt secretly piqued by his lack of
memory, and by his mere friendliness. It was as though she were
disappointed in not having to ward off unwelcome--or too
welcome--advances. The passionate impulsiveness of him, as she
remembered it, but threw into greater relief the measured comradeship of
his present attitude towards her. A more experienced woman would have
suspected him of "parti pris," for a purpose, but Ragna saw nothing but
genuine indifference, and her feminine vanity urged her to force him
into recognition of the womanhood he had been instrumental in awakening.
Therefore the simple almost childlike relations of the first days had
insensibly given way to a state of tension which Mirko understood and
was ready to turn to his advantage, but which Ragna did not understand
in the least. Here her real innocence was the weak point in her armour.
Several days passed thus, each waiting for a sign. Mirko with
perspicacity, and Ragna with a sort of subconscious expectation.

One afternoon towards the end of February they were standing by the
balustrade of the Pincio watching the sunset. The sky was a gorgeous
riot of crimson and gold, across which were flung like flaunting royal
pennants, long streamers of dark purple clouds. The very air was
luminous and golden, and the bells ringing for vespers in the amethyst
and grey city below, filled the ear with triumphant clangour. The
carriages were leaving the drive and rolled by silently under the
grey-green ilexes, the noise of the horses and of the wheels drowned by
the ringing of the bells. Ragna stood in ecstasy, her hands tightly
clasped, looking out over the sea of roofs and towers to where the great
Dome rose bubble-like, silhouetted against the glowing sky. Her face was
flushed, her eyes shining, her parted lips quivered. Mirko watching her
said to himself:

"She is ready."

She gave a sigh of deep enjoyment and murmured, "It is like what one
would imagine Heaven to be!" Mirko echoed her sigh; she turned and her
eyes met his and there was that in his glance, which caused her to lower
her eyes and her heart to beat suddenly quicker.

"It is like Paradise," he said, "but the essential is lacking; it is
like a beautiful woman without a soul."

Ragna made no answer and he continued dreamily as though thinking aloud:

"All is perfect--the stage is ready for the players--the outward
semblance is awaiting the soul to animate it."

He paused again, but the girl still remained silent. Presently he
addressed her directly:

"I told you I would unveil to you the spirit of Italy, I have done my
part--the rest lies with you."

"I do not understand what you mean," she answered. "I think you have
opened my eyes--what is there still to learn?"

"I have shown you the form, the outward shape, but you have not yet
penetrated the spirit," he said, and his voice had the softness of a
caress. "You have not guessed what is the real soul of Italy--that which
makes her, though in ruins, the Soul of the World?"

"And that 'soul' is--?" she asked in a voice so faint he could hardly
catch it.

"Love," he said, and taking her unresisting hand pressed it.

"Love," he repeated presently, and his musical voice aroused all the
echoes in her heart. "Italy is love, and love is the spirit of Italy.
That is why lovers come here; there is love magic in the air, and those
who are destined to love cannot escape it. You," he said, looking into
her eyes, "you were born to love and be loved, do you not feel that it
is so?"

A deep blush crept over Ragna's cheeks, she drew her hand from his.

"Hush, this is folly. You must not talk to me

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