Finn stood in the old room with the yellow document in his hand:  
“God brought me thus far, that I was able to erect this fair house, which shall stand till distant times, a witness to my might and that of my race. Here shall be upright living and generous dealing; the house shall be faithfully guarded from father to son; good men and women shall sit in the hall and dance to the sound of flutes and violins.
 
“I have placed this room in the most secret part of the house and no one knows of it but the architect who built it and my oldest servant. But I have sealed the architect’s tongue with a solemn oath and a heavy fee; and my servant is true to me.
 
[164]“I have decorated the room with gilt and figured leather hangings and costly carpets from the East. I have had two great armchairs made in Milan, whose woodwork is carved into birds and animals which grin strangely in the dark, but cease to do so when the lights are lit.
 
“Then I gave my servant a key of the room and told him to care for it faithfully. Every evening, when it grows dusk, he is to light the candles on the mantelpiece; and he is to do this even if he know that his master is travelling in distant lands. Every morning, he is to adjust the room with his own hands. None but himself is ever to cross the threshold.
 
“For this room shall be for me and my wife and for none other in the world. Therefore I placed it in the most secluded part of the house, far from the counting-house, where we work, from the passages, along which our servants go, and from[165] the drawing-room, where we receive our guests, ay, even from our marriage-bed, where she sleeps by my side.
 
“It shall be the temple of our marriage, hallowed by our love, which is greater than anything that we know. Here we will pray to Him Who gave us to each other. Here we will talk gladly and earnestly, every evening when our hearts impel us to. And, when we come to die, our son shall bring his wife here and they shall do as we did.
 
“This evening, which is the first in my new house, I brought my wife in here and told her my wish. She listened to my words in love and gladness and I have written down in this document how it all happened and we have set our names to it in witness for those who come after us.”
 
Finn read their names and the names of those who had taken possession of the[166] room after the builder and his wife. Last of all stood Cordt’s name and Fru Adelheid’s, which were struck out again.
 
Then he put the document back in its place and locked it up and looked round the room.
 
The old room stood again as it used to stand, built high over the square, long and deep and silent, like a spot where there is no life.
 
The balcony was white with snow and the sparrows hopped in the snow. Inside, behind the colored panes, stood many red flowers and longed for the sun. The dust had been removed from the figured-leather hangings, which shone with a new brightness. The oriental carpet spread over the floor like a lord returning from exile and once more taking possession of his estates.
 
And all the old glories had found their places again and stood as lawfully and[167] restfully as though it had never been otherwise. The spinet was there and the jar with the man writhing through thorns and the celestial globe whose stars shone and ran: all the furniture which the room’s different owners had set there in the course of time, each after his own taste and heart.
 
Before the fireplace stood the two great, strange armchairs.
 
Finn felt as if he were in a cathedral where every flag was a tombstone over a famous man. His senses drank the odor of the bygone times, his fancy peopled the room with the men and women who had sat there and exchanged strong and gentle words, while the house lay sleeping around them.
 
With it all, he became lost in thought of those who had sat there last and after whom no others were to come, those two who had given him the life which he knew not what to do with.
 
[168]He saw them before him in the love and struggle of their youth. He heard their voices in the room, he saw Fru Adelheid’s red mouth and Cordt’s steady eyes. He saw Cordt bring his wife into the room, which was the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber, and show her the strange things which his ancestors had put there.
 
He saw him on the day when he stood alone by the fireplace ... in the empty room ... and struck out his own name and Fru Adelheid’s from the document and went away and left the door open behind him....
 
He saw all this as it had happened. But they were not his father and mother. They were two attractive people of whom he had read in a book and grown fond, as a man loves art, palely and with no self-seeking in his desire.
 
Finn drew one of the big chairs over[169] to the window and sat down and sat there for long.
 
He was sitting there when Fru Adelheid came.
 
She stood in the doorway, in her white gown, with her white hair, and nodded to him. Then she turned her face round to the room and looked at it.
 
And then that happened which was only the shadow of a dream that vanished then and there: everything came to life in the room.
 
The spinet sang, the queer faces on the old chairs raised themselves on their long necks; there was a whispering and a muttering in every corner....
 
Fru Adelheid shrank back against the door. She did not see Finn, did not remember that he was there.
 
But Finn saw her.
 
He rose from his chair and his eyes beamed:
 
[170]“You light up the room, mother,” he said, “and the room lights up you.”
 
He took her hand and kissed it and, with her hand in his, Fru Adelheid went through the old room, which had been too narrow for her youthful desires.
 
The fairy-tale was over and the dread. But the glow still lay over her figure and made her look wonderfully pretty. Her cheeks were as pink as a girl’s; her step was light, her eyes moist and shy. She laughed softly and gladly, while she looked at the old things and talked about them and touched them.
 
She told the story of the woman who used to sing when she was sad and who had brought the old spinet there; and her hands shook as she struck a chord and the slender, beautiful notes sounded through the room. Of the spinning-wheel, which had whirred merrily every evening for many a good year and which[171] stood as it was, with thread upon the spindle. Of the celestial globe, which had been the toy of the man whose intellect was obscured. Of the doll with the vacant face, which stood there in memory of the lady who dreaded the deep silence of the room and never entered it but once; but her son, who loved her, had hidden the doll in the curtain. Of Fru Lykke, whose portrait had hung where the light stain was, but hung there no longer, because her marriage had been dissolved.
 
Of the jar with the man writhing through thorns, which she herself had brought as her gift, she said nothing. She passed her hand over its bright surface and was silent.
 
Finn’s eyes clung to her.
 
Never had he seen his beautiful mother so beautiful. He did not know that look, or that smile on her mouth, or that clear ring in her voice.
 
[172]At times, he added something to what she was telling and spoke with such profound intelligence that she was quite surprised and frightened. Now he guessed her words before she uttered them. Then he knew something which she had never suspected.
 
Secretly, her fear increased as to what Cordt could have told him.
 
But Finn was lost in his delight.
 
And, fascinated by her beauty and the strange things he had seen and heard and the deep silence of the room, he forgot that the seal of the old room was broken and wished to play the game as vividly as possible.
 
He drew the second of the two big chairs across to the window and made her sit down and sat himself beside her:
 
“Now you are not my mother,” he said. “You are my young bride. I have brought you into the sanctuary to-day[173] and now I will initiate you into the mysteries.”
 
Fru Adelheid turned very pale and Finn took her hand penitently:
 
“Have I hurt you, mother?”
 
She shook her head and forced herself to smile.
 
Then he walked into the room again and rejoiced at all this and talked about it. But she remained sitting with knitted brow.
 
She was heavy at heart, because it seemed to her, all at once, that she was not his mother, as they sat talking here in the secret chamber of the house. The old days came in their great might; and their strong memories and impressive words drowned the bells which had rung her into another world.
 
It was the echo here, in the old room, of Cordt’s words and of his love ... of the strong faith and great happiness of[174] the race which had sprouted in the good mould of tradition and produced flower after flower in the times that passed.
 
Fru Adelheid thought—for a moment—that it would have been well had things happened as Cordt wished.
 
But, at the same instant, she was seized by a thought that suddenly made her rebellious and young, as when she was here last, many years ago.
 
She thrust her chair back hard and looked with sparkling eyes round the room where everything and every memory was hostile to her.
 
She looked at Finn, who was standing by the celestial globe and trying to set it going, but could not, because the spring was rusty and refu............