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Then she went to the celestial globe and looked at it. She pressed the spring, so that the stars ran and shone. She looked with delight at the queer plaything and, when the clockwork stopped, set it in motion again.

She pulled out the old spinning-wheel and sat down beside it and set it going. The wheel whirred lustily in the silent room and its whirring put Fru Adelheid in a very cheerful mood. She wished the great-grandmother would come in at the door and praise her for being so industrious.

She rose from the spinning-wheel and stood in the middle of the room and looked round. She thought of an occasion when she had stood in an Indian temple and reflected that she was examining these singular old things just as calmly as she had contemplated the Hindu sanctuary.

It seemed to her as though she were standing in a mortuary chapel, where old and interesting, but foolish ideas and preposterous superstitions stared at her from the sunken faces of mummies. She felt no terror, for she knew that all that was dead and gone and could never return.