"You have come as a thief in the golden midnight, and the thing you seek is the life of Sigurd! Yes--yes! it is true--the spirit cannot lie! You must kill, you must steal--see how the blood drips, drop by drop, from the heart of Sigurd! and the jewel you steal,--ah! what a jewel! You shall not find such another in Norway!" Was not the hidden meaning of these incoherent phrases rendered somewhat clear now? though how the poor lad's disordered imagination had been able thus promptly to conjure up with such correctness, an idea of Errington's future relations with Thelma, was a riddle impossible of explanation. He thought, too, with a sort of generous remorse, of that occasion when Sigurd had visited him on board the yacht to implore him to leave the Altenfjord. He realized everything,--the inchoate desires of the desolate being, who, though intensely capable of loving, felt himself in a dim, sad way, unworthy of love,--the struggling passions in him that clamored for utterance--the instinctive dread and jealousy of a rival, while knowing that he was both physically and mentally unfitted to compete with one,--all these things passed through Philip's mind, and filled him with a most profound pity for the hidden sufferings, the tortures and inexplicable emotions which had racked Sigurd's darkened soul. And, still busy with these reflections, he turned on his arm as he lay, and whispered softly to his friend who was close by him--"I say, Lorimer,--I feel as if I had been to blame somehow in this affair! If I had never come on the scene, Sigurd would still have been happy in his own way."
Lorimer was silent. After a pause, Errington went on still in the same low tone.
"Poor little fellow! Do you know, I can't imagine anything more utterly distracting than having to see such a woman as Thelma day after day,--loving her all the time, and knowing such love to be absolutely hopeless! Why, it was enough to make him crazier than ever!"
Lorimer moved restlessly. "Yes, it must have been hard on him!" he answered at last, in a gentle, somewhat sad tone. "Perhaps it's as well he's out of it all. Life is infinitely perplexing to many of us. By this time he's no doubt wiser than you or I, Phil,--he could tell us the reason why love is such a blessing to some men, and such a curse to others!"
Errington made no answer, and they relapsed into silence--silence which was almost unbroken save by an occasional deep sigh from Olaf Güldmar and a smothered exclamation such as, "Poor lad, poor lad! Who would have thought it?"