“If she were here I could kill her!” she thought to herself; but the fierce indignation died down almost instantly, for all the tenderness of her womanly nature was called out by Frithiof’s need.
“Try if you can get him to take this,” said the nurse, handing her a cup of beef-tea.
He took it passively, but evidently did not in the least recognize her. It was only after some time had gone by that the tone of her voice and the sound of his native tongue affected him. His eyes, which for so many days had seen only the phantoms of his imagination, fixed themselves on her face, and by degrees a light of recognition dawned in them.
“Sigrid!” he exclaimed, in a tone of such relief that tears started to her eyes.
“I have come to take care of you. And after you have been to sleep we will have a long talk,” she said gently. “There, let me make your pillows comfortable.”
Her presence, instead of exciting him to wonder or to ask questions, acted upon him like a soothing spell.
“Talk,” he said. “It is so good to hear Norse once more.”
“I will talk if you will try to sleep. I will sit here and say you some of Björnsen’s songs.” And, with his hand still in hers, she said, in her quieting voice, “Jeg har sogt,” and “Olaf Trygvason,” and “Prinsessen.”
This last seemed specially to please him, and while, for the sixth time, she was repeating it, Roy, who had been watching them intently, made her a little sign, and, glancing down, she saw that Frithiof had fallen asleep. No one stirred, for they all knew only too well how much depended on that sleep. The nurse, who was one of those cheerful and buoyant characters that live always in the present—and usually in the present of others—mused over her three companions, and settled in her practical mind the best means of relieving Sigrid without disturbing the patient.
Sigrid herself was living in the past, and was watching sadly enough Frithiof’s altered face. Could he ever again be the same strong, hardy, dauntless fellow he had once been? She remembered how in the old days he had come back from hunting fresh and invigorated when every one else had been tired out. She thought of his room in the old home in Kalvedalen with its guns and fishing-tackle, its reindeer skins and bear skins, its cases of stuffed birds, all trophies of his prowess. And then she looked round this dreary London room, and thought how wretched it must have felt to him when night after night he returned to it and sat working at translations in which he could take no sort of interest.