Cecil laughed and promised, and the two girls talked merrily together as they stitched away at the household linen, Frithiof looking up from his newspaper every now and then to listen. Things had so far brightened with him that he was ready to take up his life again with patience, but he had his days of depression even now, though, for Sigrid’s sake, he tried not to give way more than could be helped. There was no denying, however, that Blanche had clouded his life, and though he never mentioned her name, and as far as possible crowded the very thought of her out of his mind, resolutely turning to work, or books, or the lives of others, yet her influence was still strong with him, and was one of the worst foes he had to fight against. It was constantly mocking him with the vanity of human hopes, with the foolishness of his perfect trust which had been so grossly betrayed; it was an eternal temptation to think less highly of women, to take refuge in cynical contempt, and to sink into a hard, joyless skepticism.
On the other hand, Sigrid, as his sister, and Cecil, as a perfectly frank and outspoken friend, were no small help to him in the battle. They could not altogether enter into his thoughts or wholly understand the loneliness and bitterness of his life, any more than he could enter into their difficulties, for, even when surrounded by those we love, it is almost always true that
“Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart.”
But they made life a very different thing to him and gave him courage to go on, for they were a continual protest against that lowered side of womanhood that Blanche had revealed to him. One woman having done her best to ruin the health alike of his body and his soul, it remained for these two to counteract her bad influence, and to do for him all that can be done by sisterly love and pure unselfish friendship.
If there is one thing more striking to an observer of life than any other it is the strange law of compensation, and its wholly unexpected working. We see people whose lives are smooth and easy rendered miserable by some very trifling cause. And, again, we see people whose griefs and wrongs are heartrending, and behold in spite of their sorrows they can take pleasure in some very slight amusement, which seems to break into their darkened lives with a welcome brightness enhanced by contrast. It was thus with Frithiof. He entered, as men seldom trouble themselves to enter, into all the minutiæ of the furnishing, spent hours in Roy’s workshop busy at the carpenter’s bench over such things as could be made or mended, and enjoyed heartily the planning and arranging which a year ago he would have voted an intolerable bore.