WHEN Cordt had finished telling the story of the old room, he sat by the window and looked across the square, where the dusk was gathering about the newly-lighted lamps.  
The servant entered noiselessly and lit the chandelier and went out noiselessly again. And the light filled the whole of the room and fell upon Cordt, who sat and gazed before him, and upon Finn, who stood by him with his eyes fixed on his face.
 
But Finn and Cordt were not where the light found them.
 
They were in the wonderful mystery of the old room. They heard the rippling of the fountain outside in the silent square;[146] they saw the blaze of the red flowers on the balcony. The slender notes of the spinet sounded in their ears; Fru Adelheid’s white gown rustled over the floor.
 
And, when Cordt turned his face towards his son, he appeared to Finn as a very big, old man; and Finn seemed to Cordt the little child that once lay and laughed in the cradle and fought with its little fat fists.
 
Then Cordt stood up and took Finn’s arm and they walked to and fro, silent, overcome with what they had seen and afraid lest they should shatter the dream by speaking.
 
They walked for some time. And, when, at length, they stopped before the window, which was dewed with the heat, so that they could see nothing through it, Cordt remembered that there was still something which Finn ought to know and which he could not ask about.
 
[147]He looked at Finn and remembered how he had loved his mother.
 
It was her eyes, but more restful-looking; her mouth, but paler and tired, as though it had tried a thousand times to say something which it never could. He had her slender waist and he was taller than Cordt, but carried his height like a burden. Then he also had Fru Adelheid’s pale cheeks and forehead, but Cordt’s hair, only thicker still and blacker.
 
“Finn,” said Cordt and laid his hands on his shoulders.
 
Finn started and could not look at him. But Cordt took him under the chin and lifted his head and looked with a sad smile into his frightened eyes:
 
“There is only one thing left to tell you, Finn.... Fru Adelheid did not take a lover.”
 
His smile widened when he saw his[148] son’s sudden and great joy; and he drew him to him and kissed him.
 
But then he suddenly left him and sat down somewhere in the room, with his back to him. Finn followed him and stood by him for a while and thought kindly and fondly of him and could find nothing to say.
 
The thoughts rushed through Cordt’s head.
 
Now that he had lived through it all anew, the scab broke which the silence of many years had placed upon the wound in his will. His eyes grew hard and angry, he wanted to speak as he used to speak when he fought his hopeless fight for Fru Adelheid.
 
But then his glance fell upon Finn.
 
He sat as he liked best to sit, with bent head and his hands open upon his knees.
 
And Cordt grew gentle again and said, softly:
 
[149]“You are glad, of course. For, you see, she is your mother.”
 
He crossed the room and came back and stood with his arm over the back of the chair and looked at Finn, who was lost in his thoughts. It was silent in the room and silent outside, for it was Sunday. They could hear the bells ringing for evening service.
 
“She never secured the red flowers in the place of the blue which she valued so little,” said Cordt, “I don’t know ... I often thought....”
 
The bells rang out.
 
There was one that was quite close and one that was farther away, but louder, nevertheless. And there was a sound of distant bells which could not be distinguished from one another, but which sang in the air.
 
It sounded louder than it was, because they were thinking of it; and the ringing[150] grew and filled the room with its deafening clamor.
 
Then there came a rumbling in the gateway. The carriage drove out in the soft snow, where they could not hear it.
 
“That’s Fru Adelheid going to church,” said Cordt.
 
He sat down by his son and began to talk in a low voice and without looking at him.
 
The bells rang and then suddenly stopped and increased the silence a hundredfold.
 
“There was a night at Landeck when the bells caught her, a night following upon a day of sunshine and merriment and many people. She was the gayest of us all and, in the evening, all at once, she became silent and tired, as so often happened, without any cause that I knew of.... You were with us. You were ten years old then; you lay and slept. We[151] had been standing together by your bed and looking at you and she began to cry and I could do nothing but hold her hand in mine and stop speaking.”
 
Finn listened, as he had just listened to the bells, without making out what the words had to tell him. He only knew that his mother was without blame and that his father had been able to tell it him all on that day and to leave it to him to pronounce judgment between himself and her. His joy at this sang within him and made all the rest easy and light and indifferent.
 
And Cordt continued:
 
“Then I went out on the verandah with my cigar and she stood in the doorway and listened to the bell of a little chapel up in the mountains, where we had been during the day. We had heard the story when we were there. Once, in the old days, a pious man had built the chapel in[152] expiation of a sin and, since then, the bell had rung two hours after midnight every day.... She asked whether it would go on ringing till the end of the world and we came to talk of all the bells that ring over the earth, by day and by night, sun up and sun down, and comfort weary mortals.... Sometimes she was silent. But the bell rang up there constantly. And she constantly began to talk again and constantly about the same thing. About the bells that sounded so eternally and so identically over the whole world ... about those who heard them for the first time, one day when they were running like wild heathens in the endless wood ... about those whose will suddenly broke in the midst of the modern crowd, so that they fell on their knees and crept away where the bells summoned them.”
 
Finn looked up. The words now[153] caught his mind and he woke from his dreams.
 
“I see her before me still, as she stood on the night when she carried her soul to God. Her strange eyes lifted to the stars ... her white face ... her hands ... and her words, which came so quickly, as though her life depended upon their coming, and so heavily, as though every one of them caused her pain. She never gave it a thought that I was there: she spoke as though she were doing public penance in the church-porch.... And then she declared that it was over.... It had become empty around her and cold and dark to anguish and despair, there where her glad eyes had beamed upon the lights and the crowd of the feast. Despair had come long since and slowly and she had closed her eyes to it and denied it. It had grown and come nearer to her and she had run away from it, as though she[154] were running for her life. Now it was there and reached from earth to heaven, in her, around her, far and wide. And, if the bells could not conquer it, t............