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Olaf Gueldmar shook his head emphatically. "You can't do it," he said
decisively. "Everything in every way has been begun and completed and
then forgotten over and over in this world,--to be begun and completed
and forgotten again, and so on to the end of the chapter. No one nation
is better than another in this respect,--there is,--there can be nothing
new. Norway, for example, has had its day; whether it will ever have
another I know not,--at any rate, I shall not live to see it. And yet,
what a past!--" He broke off and his eyes grew meditative.
Lorimer looked at him. "You would have been a Viking, Mr. Gueldmar, had
you lived in the old days," he said with a smile.
"I should, indeed!" returned the old man, with an unconsciously haughty
gesture of his head; "and no better fate could have befallen me! To sail
the seas in hot pursuit of one's enemies, or in search of further
conquest,--to feel the very wind and sun beating up the blood in one's
veins,--to live the life of a _man_--a true man! .


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