"I am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but you," said she, mechanically moving to throw herself down.

Seraphitus blew softly on her brow and eyes. Suddenly, as a traveler is refreshed by a bath, Minna had forgotten that acute anguish; it had vanished under that soothing breath, which penetrated her frame and bathed it in balsamic effluence, as swiftly as the breath had pa.s.sed through the air.

"Who and what are you?" said she, with an impulse of delicious alarm. "But I know.--You are my life.--How can you look down into the gulf without dying?" she asked after a pause.

Seraphitus left Minna clinging to the granite, and went as a shadow might have done to stand on the edge of the crag, his eyes sounding the bottom of the fiord, defying its bewildering depths; his figure did not sway, his brow was as white and calm as that of a marble statue--deep meeting deep.

"Seraphitus, if you love me, come back!" cried the girl. "Your danger brings back all my torments. Who--who are you to have such superhuman strength at your age?" she asked, feeling his arms around her once more.

"Why," said Seraphitus, "you can look into far vaster s.p.a.ce without a qualm;" and raising his hand, the strange being pointed to the blue halo formed by the clouds round a clear opening just over their heads, in which they could see the stars, though it was daylight, in consequence of some atmospheric laws not yet fully explained.

"But what a difference!" she said, smiling.

"You are right," he replied; "we are born to aspire skywards. Our native home, like a mother's face, never frightens its children."

His voice found an echo in his companion's soul; she was silent.

"Come! let us go on," said he.

They rushed on together by the paths faintly visible along the mountain side, devouring the distance, flying from shelf to shelf, from ledge to ledge, with the swiftness of the Arab horse, that bird of the desert. In a few minutes they reached a green carpet of gra.s.s, moss, and flowers, on which no one yet had ever rested.

"What a pretty _soe_!" cried Minna, giving the native name to this little meadow; "but how comes it here, so high up?"

"Here, indeed, the Norwegian vegetation ceases," said Seraphitus; "and if a few plants and flowers thrive on this spot, it is thanks to the shelter of the rock which protects them from the Polar cold.--Put this spray in your bosom, Minna," he went on, plucking a flower; "take this sweet creature on which no human eye has yet rested, and keep the unique blossom in memory of this day, unique in your life! You will never again find a guide to lead you to this _soeter_."

He hastily gave her a hybrid plant which his eagle eye had discerned among the growth of _silene acaulis_ and saxifrage, a real miracle developed under the breath of angels. Minna seized it with childlike eagerness; a tuft of green, as transparent and vivid as an emerald, composed of tiny leaves curled into cones, light brown at the heart, shaded softly to green at the point, and cut into infinitely delicate teeth. These leaves were so closely set that they seemed to mingle in a dense ma.s.s of dainty rosettes.

Here and there this cushion was studded with white stars edged with a line of gold, and from the heart of each grew a bunch of purple stamens without a pistil. A scent that seemed to combine that of the rose and of the orange-blossom, but wilder and more ethereal, gave a heavenly charm to this mysterious flower, at which Seraphitus gazed with melancholy, as though its perfume had expressed to him a plaintive thought, which he alone understood. To Minna this amazing blossom seemed a caprice of Nature, who had amused herself by endowing a handful of gems with the freshness, tenderness, and fragrance of a plant.

"Why should it be unique? Will it never reproduce its kind?" said she to Seraphitus, who colored and changed the subject.

"Let us sit down--turn round--look! At such a height you will perhaps not be frightened. The gulfs are so far below that you cannot measure their depth; they have the level perspective of the sea, the indefiniteness of the clouds, the hue of the sky. The ice in the fiord is an exquisite turquoise, the pine forests are visible only as dim brown streaks. To us the depths may well be thus disguised."

Seraphitus spoke these words with that unction of tone and gesture which is known only to those who have attained to the highest places on the mountains of the earth, and which is so involuntarily a.s.sumed that the most arrogant master finds himself prompted to treat his guide as a brother, and never feels himself the superior till they have descended into the valleys where men dwell.

He untied Minna's snow-shoes, kneeling at her feet. The girl did not notice it, so much was she amazed at the imposing spectacle of the Norwegian panorama--the long stretch of rocks lying before her at a glance, so much was she struck by the perennial solemnity of those frozen summits, for which words have no expression.

"We have not come here by unaided human strength!" said she, clasping her hands. "I must be dreaming!"

"You call a fact supernatural, because you do not know its cause," he replied.

"Your answers are always stamped with some deep meaning," said she. "With you I understand everything without an effort.--Ah! I am free!"

"Your snow-shoes are off, that is all."

"Oh!" cried she, "and I would fain have untied yours, and have kissed your feet!"

"Keep those speeches for Wilfrid," said Seraphitus mildly.

"Wilfrid!" echoed Minna in a tone of fury, which died away as she looked at her companion. "You are never angry!" said she, trying, but in vain, to take his hand. "You are in all things so desperately perfect!"

"Whence you infer that I have no feelings?"

Minna was startled at a glance so penetratingly thrown into her mind.

"You prove to me that we understand each other," replied she, with the grace of a loving woman.

Seraphitus gently shook his head, with a flashing look that was at once sweet and sad.

"You who know everything," Minna went on, "tell me why the alarm I felt below, by your side, is dissipated now that I am up here; why I dare for the first time to look you in the face; whereas, down there, I scarce dare steal a glance at you?"

"Perhaps up here we have cast off the mean things of the earth," said he, pulling off his pelisse.

"I never saw you so beautiful," said Minna, sitting down on a mossy stone, and gazing in contemplation of the being who had thus brought her to a part of the mountain which from afar seemed inaccessible.

Never, in fact, had Seraphitus shone with such brilliant splendor--the only expression that can do justice to the eagerness of his face and the aspect of his person. Was this radiance due to the effulgence given to the complexion by the pure mountain air and the reflection from the snow? Was it the result of an internal impetus which still excites the frame at the moment it is resting after long exertion? Was it produced by the sudden contrast between the golden glow of sunshine and the gloom of the clouds through which this pretty pair had pa.s.sed?

To all these causes we must perhaps add the effects of one of the most beautiful phenomena that human nature can offer. If some skilled physiologist had studied this being, who, to judge by the boldness of his brow and the light in his eyes at this moment, was a youth of seventeen; if he had sought the springs of this blooming life under the whitest skin that the North ever bestowed on one of its sons, he would, no doubt, have believed in the existence of a phosphoric fluid in the sinews that seemed to shine through the skin, or in the constant presence of an internal glow, which tinted Seraphitus as a light shines through an alabaster vase.

Delicately slender as his hands were--he had taken off his gloves to loosen Minna's sandals--they seemed to have such strength as the Creator has given to the diaphanous joints of a crab. The fire that blazed in his eyes rivaled the rays of the sun; he seemed not to receive but to give out light. His frame, as slight and fragile as a woman's, was that of a nature feeble in appearance, but whose strength is always adequate to its desires, which are sometimes strong. Seraphitus, though of middle height, seemed taller as seen in front; he looked as if he fain would spring upwards. His hair, with its light curls, as if touched by a fairy hand and tossed by a breeze, added to the illusion produced by his airy att.i.tude; but this absolutely effortless mien was the outcome rather of a mental state than of physical habit.

Minna's imagination seconded this constant hallucination; it would have affected any beholder, for it gave to Seraphitus the appearance of one of the beings we see in our happiest dreams. No familiar type can give any idea of this face, to Minna so majestically manly, though in the sight of a man its feminine grace would have eclipsed the loveliest heads by Raphael. That Painter of Heaven has frequently given a sort of tranquil joy and tender suavity to the lines of his angelic beauties; but without seeing Seraphitus himself, what mind can conceive of the sadness mingled with hope which half clouded the ineffable feelings expressed in his features? Who could picture to himself, even in the artist's dream, where all things are possible, the shadows cast by mysterious awe on that too intellectual brow, which seemed to interrogate the skies, and always to pity the earth? That head could tower disdainful, like a n.o.ble bird of prey whose cries rend the air, or bow resigned, like the turtle-dove whose voice sheds tenderness in the depths of the silent forest.

Seraphitus had a complexion of surprising whiteness, made all the more remarkable by red lips, brown eyebrows, and silky lashes, the only details that broke the pallor of a face whose perfect regularity did not hinder the strong expression of his feelings; they were mirrored there without shock or violence, but with the natural, majestic gravity we like to attribute to superior beings. Everything in those monumental features spoke of strength and repose.

Minna stood up to take the young man's hand, hoping to draw him down to her so as to press on that fascinating brow a kiss of admiration rather than of love; but one look from his eyes, a look that went through her as a sunbeam goes through a gla.s.s prism, froze the poor child. She felt the gulf between them without understanding it; she turned away her head and wept. Suddenly a strong hand was round her waist, and a voice full of kindness said:

"Come."

She obeyed, resting her head in sudden relief on the young man's heart; while he, measuring his steps by hers in gentle and attentive conformity, led her to a spot whence they could behold the dazzling beauty of the Polar scenery.

"But before I look or listen, tell me, Seraphitus, why do you repulse me?

Have I displeased you? And how? Tell me. I do not want to call anything my own; I would that my earthly possessions should be yours, as the riches of my heart already are; that light should come to me only from your eyes, as my mind is dependent on yours; then I should have no fear of offending you, since I should but reflect the impulses of your soul, the words of your heart, the light of your light, as we send up to G.o.d the meditations by which He feeds our spirit.--I would be wholly you!"

"Well, Minna, a constant aspiration is a promise made by the future. Hope on!--Still, if you would be pure always, unite the thought of the Almighty to your earthly affections. Thus will you love all creatures, and your heart will soar high!"

"I will do whatever you desire," said she, looking up at him timidly.

"I cannot be your companion," said Seraphitus sadly.

He suppressed some reflections, raised his arms in the direction of Christiania, which was visible as a speck on the horizon, and said:

"Look!"

"We are indeed small," said she.

"Yes; but we become great by feeling and intellect," said Seraphitus. "The knowledge of things, Minna, begins with us; the little we know of the laws of the visible world enables us to conceive of the immensity of higher spheres. I know not whether the time is ripe for talking thus to you; but I so long to communicate to you the flame of my hopes! Some day, perhaps, we may meet in the world where love never dies."

"Why not now and for ever?" said she in a murmur.