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into the hands of God, to grind in the dust if he liked, to
raise up when he pleased, to crush down, to bend.
It was partly Marie’s own fault that such thoughts could
rise in him, for her love, if she did love, was of a strangely
proud, almost insolent nature. It would be but a halting
image to say that her love for the late Ulrik Christian had
been like a lake whipped and tumbled by a storm, while
her love for Ulrik Frederik was the same water in the
evening, becalmed, cold, and glassy, stirred but by the
breaking of frothy bubbles among the dark reeds of the shore.
Yet the simile would have some truth, for not only was she
cold and calm toward her lover, but the bright myriad
dreams of life that thronged in the wake of her first passion
had paled and dissolved in the drowsy calm of her present
feeling.
She loved Ulrik Frederik after a fashion, but might it
not be chiefly as the magic wand opening the portals to the
magnificent pageant of life, and might it not be the pageant
that she really loved? Sometimes it would seem otherwise.
When she sat on his knee in the twilight and sang little
airs about Daphne and Amaryllis to her own accompaniment,
the song would die away, and while her fingers played
with the strings of the cithern, she would whisper in his
waiting ear words so sweet and warm that no true love owns
them sweeter, and there were tender tears in her eyes that
could be only the dew of love’s timid unrest. And
yet—might it not be that her longing was conjuring up a mere
mood, rooted in the memories of her past feeling, sheltered
by the brooding darkness, fed by hot blood and soft music,—a
mood that deceived herself and made him happy? Or
was it nothing but maidenly shyness that made her chary
of endearments by the light of day, and was it nothing but
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