ful sleep between the bright, warm days—each new day a little warmer than the one before, each day with more flowers on the Campagna, which did not seem greener than yesterday, yet was much more green and mellow than the week before.
Her love for him had come in the same way. Every night she looked forward to the next sunny day with him on the Campagna, but gradually it was more himself and his young love that she longed for. She had let him kiss her because it gave her pleasure, and from day to day their kisses had grown more frequent, till at last words faded away and kisses took their place.
He had become more manly and mature from day to day; the uncertainty and the sudden despondency of the earlier days had quite left him. She herself was brighter, friendlier, more sure of herself, not the coldness of youth, always ready to fight, but more a calm confidence in herself. She was not disappointed with life now because it would not shape itself according to her dreams, but accepted each day, trusting that the unknown was right and could be turned to advantage.
Why should not love come in the same way, slowly, like the warmth that grows day by day, thawing and tempering, and not as she had always believed it would come—as a storm that would change her at once into a woman she did not know, and whom her will could not control.
Helge accepted this slow, sound growth of her love quite naturally and calmly. Every night when they parted her heart was filled with gratitude to him, because he had not asked for more than she could give that day.
Oh, if they could have stayed here till May—till summer—the whole of summer, so that their love might ripen until they belonged to one another completely. They would go together to the mountains in the summer; the marriage could take place here later, or at home in the autumn, for they would marry, of course, in the ordinary way, since they were fond of each other.
