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Title: The Dangerous Age

Author: Karin Michaëlis

Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14187]

Language: English

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_THE DANGEROUS AGE_




_LETTERS AND FRAGMENTS FROM A WOMAN'S DIARY_

_TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH OF KARIN MICHAËLIS_

_NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXI_




TO

MY DEAR BROTHER-IN-LAW

BARON YOOST DAHLERUP




_INTRODUCTION TO THE FRENCH EDITION By MARCEL PRÉVOST_


Here is a strange book. A novel from the North, its solid structure, its
clear, unadorned form are purely Latin. A woman's novel, in its integral
and violent sincerity it can only be compared to certain famous
masculine confessions.

The author, Karin Michaëlis, a Dane, is not at all known in France. _The
Dangerous Age_ is not her first book; but it is, I feel sure, the first
that has been translated into French. Naturally enough the
Danish-Scandinavian literature is transmitted in the first instance
through newspapers and reviews, and through German publishers. This is
the result of local proximity and the affinity of language. Several
novels by Karin Michaëlis were known to the German public before _The
Dangerous Age_; but none of them had awakened the same keen curiosity,
provoked such discussion, or won such success as this book. In all the
countries of Central Europe the most widely read novel at the present
moment is _The Dangerous Age_. Edition succeeds edition, and the fortune
of the book has been increased by the quarrels it has provoked; for it
has been much discussed and criticised, not on account of its literary
value, which is incontestable, but because of the idea which animates
it.

Shall I confess that it was just this great success, and the polemical
renown of the novel, that roused my suspicions when first I chanced to
see the German version of it? Contrary to the reputation which our
neighbours on the other side of the Vosges like to foist upon us, French
literature, at the present day, is far less noisily scandalous than
their own. It is only necessary to glance over the advertisements which
certain German publishing firms issue at the end of their publications
in order to be convinced of this. It is amusing to find every kind of
"puff" couched in the exaggerated style which the modern German affects.

It was with some bias and suspicion, therefore, that I took up _Das
gefährliche Alter_. When I started to read the book, nothing could have
been further from my mind than to write, a French version and to present
it myself to the public. This is all the more reason why justice should
be done to Karin Michaëlis. I have read no other book of hers except
_The Dangerous Age_; but in this novel she has in no way exceeded what a
sincere and serious observer has a right to publish. Undoubtedly her
book is not intended for young girls, for what the English call
"bread-and-butter misses." But nobody is compelled to write exclusively
for schoolgirls, and it has yet to be proved that there is any necessity
to feed them on fiction as well as on bread and butter.

_The Dangerous Age_ deals with a bold subject; it is a novel filled with
the "strong meat" of human nature; a novel which speaks in accents at
once painful and ironical, and ends in despair; but it is also a book to
which the most scrupulous author on the question of "the right to speak
out" need not hesitate to attach his name.

It is difficult for one who knows no Danish, to judge of its literary
value; and that is my case. In the German version--and I hope also in
the French--the reader will not fail to discern some of the novelist's
finest gifts. In the first instance, there is that firmness and solidity
of structure which is particularly difficult to keep up when a book
takes the form of a journal, of jottings and meditations, as does _The
Dangerous Age_. Then there are the depth of reflection, the ingenuity of
the arguments, the muscular brevity of style, the expression being
closely modelled upon the thought; nothing is vague, but nothing is
superfluous. We must not seek in this volume for picturesque landscape
painting, for the lyrical note, for the complacently woven "purple
patch." The book is rigorously deprived of all these things; and, having
regard to its subject, this is not its least merit.

       *       *       *       *       *

When a woman entitles a book _The Dangerous Age_ we may feel sure she
does not intend to write of the dangers of early youth. The dangerous
age described by Karin Michaëlis is precisely that time of life which
inspired Octave Feuillet to write the novel, half-dialogue,
half-journal, which appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in 1848, was
adapted for the stage, played at the _Gymnase_ in 1854, and reproduced
later with some success at the Comédie-Française--I mean the work
entitled _La Crise_.

It is curious to compare the two books, partly on account of the long
space of time which separates them, and partly because of the different
way in which the two writers treat the same theme.

Octave Feuillet, be it remembered, only wrote what might be spoken aloud
in the most conventional society. Nevertheless those who think the
author of _Monsieur de Cantors_ timid and insipid are only short-sighted
critics. I advise my readers when they have finished the last page of
_The Dangerous Age_ to re-read _La Crise_. They will observe many points
of resemblance, notably in the "journal" portion of the latter.
Juliette, Feuillet's heroine, thus expresses herself:

"What name can I give to this moral discomfort, this distaste for my
former habits, this aimless restlessness and discontent with myself and
others, of which I have been conscious during the last few months?... I
have taken it into my head to hate the trinkets on my husband's
watchchain. We lived together in peace for ten years, those trinkets and
I ... Now, I don't know why, we have suddenly fallen out...."

These words from _La Crise_ contain the argument of _The Dangerous Age_.

And yet I will wager that Karin Michaëlis never read _La Crise_. Had she
read it, however, her book would still have remained all her own, by
reason of her individual treatment of a subject that is also a dangerous
one. We have made considerable advances since 1848. Even in Denmark
physiology now plays a large part in literature. Feuillet did not
venture to do more than to make his Juliet experience temptation from a
medical lover, who is a contrast to her magistrate husband. Although
doctors come off rather badly in _The Dangerous Age_, the book owes much
to them and to medical science. Much; perhaps too much. If this woman's
work had been imagined and created by a man, no doubt he would have been
accused of having lost sight of women's repugnance to speak or write of
their physical inferiority, or even to dwell upon it in thought. Yet the
name Karin Michaëlis is no pseudonym; the writer really is of the same
sex as her heroine Elsie Lindtner.

Is not this an added reason for the curiosity which this book awakens?
The most sincere and complete, the humblest and most moving of feminine
confessions proceeds from one of those Northern women, whom we Latin
races are pleased to imagine as types of immaterial candour, sovereign
"intellectuality," and glacial temperament--souls in harmony with their
natural surroundings, the rigid pine forests and snow-draped heathlands
of Scandinavia.

A Scandinavian woman! Immediately the words evoke the chaste vision sung
by Leconte de Lisle, in his poem "l'Epiphanie":

  Elle passe, tranquille, en un rêve divin,
    Sur le bord du plus frais de tes lacs, ô Norvège!
  Le sang rose et subtil qui dore son col fin
    Est doux comme un rayon de l'aube sur la neige.

  Quand un souffle furtif glisse en ses cheveux blonds,
    Une cendre ineffable inonde son épaule,
  Et, de leur transparence argentant leurs cils longs,
    Ses yeux out la couleur des belle nuits du pôle.

  Et le gardien pensif du mystique oranger
    Des balcons de l'Aurore eternelle se penche,
  Et regarde passer ce fantôme léger
    Dans les plis de sa robe immortellement blanche.

"Immortellement blanche!" Very white indeed!... Read the intimate
journal of Elsie Lindtner, written precisely by the side of one of these
fresh Northern lakes. Possibly at eighteen Elsie Lindtner may have
played at "Epiphanies" and filled "the pensive guardian of the mystic
orange tree" with admiration. But it is at forty-two that she begins to
edit her private diary, and her eyes that "match the hue of polar
nights" have seen a good deal in the course of those twenty years. And
if in the eyes of the law she has remained strictly faithful to her
marriage vows, she has judged herself in the secret depths of her heart.
She has also judged other women, her friends and confidants. The moment
of "the crisis" arrives, and, taking refuge in "a savage solitude," in
which even the sight of a male servant is hateful to her, she sets down
with disconcerting lucidity all she has observed in other women, and in
herself. These other women are also of the North: Lillie Rothe, Agatha
Ussing, Astrid Bagge, Margarethe Ernst, Magna Wellmann.... Her memory
invokes them all, and they reappear. We seem to take part in a strange,
painful revel; a witches' revel of ardent yet withered sorceresses; a
revel in which the modern demons of Neurasthenia and Hysteria sport and
sneer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us not be mistaken, however. Elsie Lindtner's confession is not
merely to be weighed by its fierce physiological sincerity; it is the
feminine soul, and the feminine soul of all time, that is revealed in
this extraordinary document. I think nothing less would give out such a
pungent odour of truth. _The Dangerous Age_ contains pages dealing with
women's smiles and tears, with their love of dress and desire to please,
and with the social relations between themselves and the male sex, which
will certainly irritate some feminine readers. Let them try to unravel
the real cause of their annoyance: perhaps they will perceive that they
are actually vexed because a woman has betrayed the freemasonry that
exists among their own sex. We must add that we are dealing here with
another nation, and every Frenchwoman may, if she choose, decline to
recognise herself among these portraits from Northern Europe.

A sure diagnosis of the vital conditions under which woman exists, and
an acute observation of her complicated soul--these two things alone
would suffice, would they not, to recommend the novel in which they were
to be found? But _The Dangerous Age_ possesses another quality which, at
first sight, seems to have no connection with the foregoing: it is by no
means lacking in emotion. Notwithstanding that she has the eye of the
doctor and the psychologist, Elsie Lindtner, the heroine, has also the
nerves and sensibility of a woman. Her daring powers of analysis do not
save her from moments of mysterious terror, such as came over her, for
no particular reason, on a foggy evening; nor yet from the sense of
being utterly happy--equally without reason--on a certain autumn night;
nor from feeling an intense sensuous pleasure in letting the little
pebbles on the beach slide between her fingers. In a word, all the
harshness of her judgments and reflections do not save her from the
dreadful distress of growing old....

In vain she withdraws from the society of her fellow-creatures, in the
hope that old age will no longer have terrors for her when there is no
one at hand to watch her physical decay; the redoubtable phantom still
haunts her in her retreat; watches her, brushes past her, and mocks her
sincere effort to abandon all coquetry and cease "to count as a woman."
At the same time a cruel melancholia possesses her; she feels she has
become old without having profited by her youth. Not that she descends
to the coarse and libertine regrets of "grand'mère" in Béranger's song,
"Ah! que je regrette!" Elsie Lindtner declares more than once that if
she had to start life over again she would be just as irreproachable.
But the nearer she gets to the crisis, the more painfully and lucidly
she perceives the antinomy between two feminine desires: the desire of
moral dignity and the desire of physical enjoyment. In a woman of her
temperament this need of moral dignity becomes increasingly imperious
the more men harass her with their desires--an admirable piece of
observation which I believe to be quite new. Moral resistance becomes
weaker in proportion as the insistent passion of men becomes rarer and
less active. She will end by yielding entirely when men cease to find
her desirable. Then, even the most honourable of women, finding herself
no longer desired, will perhaps lose the sense of her dignity so far as
to send out a despairing appeal to the companion who is fleeing from
her....

Such is the inward conflict which forms the subject of _The Dangerous
Age_. It must be conceded that it lacks neither greatness nor human
interest.

       *       *       *       *       *

I wish to add a few lines in order to record here an impression which I
experienced while reading the very first pages of _The Dangerous Age_;
an impression that became deeper and clearer when I had closed the book.

_The Dangerous Age_ is one of those rare novels by a woman in which the
writer has not troubled to think from a man's point of view. I lay
stress upon this peculiarity because it is _very rare_, especially among
the contemporary works of Frenchwomen.

The majority of our French authoresses give us novels in which their
ambition to think, to construct and to write in a masculine style is
clearly perceptible. And nothing, I imagine, gives them greater pleasure
than when, thanks to their pseudonyms, their readers actually take them
for men writers.

Therefore all this mass of feminine literature in France, with three or
four exceptions--all this mass of literature of which I am far from
denying the merits--has really told us nothing new about the soul of
woman. A strange result is that not a single woman writer of the present
day is known as a specialist in feminine psychology.

Karin Michaëlis has been inspired to write a study of womankind without
trying to interpose between her thought and the paper the mind and
vision of a man. The outcome is astonishing. I have said that the
construction of the novel is solid; but no man could have built it up in
that way. It moves to a definite goal by a sure path; yet its style is
variable like the ways of every woman, even if she be completely
mistress of herself.... Thus her flights of thought, like
carrier-pigeons, never fail to reach their end, although at times they
circle and hover as though troubled by some mysterious hesitancy or
temptation to turn back from their course....

Elsie Lindtner's journal shows us many examples of these circling
flights and retrogressions. Sometimes too we observe a gap, an empty
space, in which words and ideas seem to have failed. Again, there are
sudden leaps from one subject to another, the true thought appearing,
notwithstanding, beneath the artificial thought which is written down.
Sometimes there comes an abrupt and painful pause, as though somebody
walking absent-mindedly along the road found themselves brought up by a
yawning cleft....

This cinematograph of feminine thought, stubborn yet disconnected, is to
my mind the principal literary merit of the book; more so even than its
strength and brevity of style.

       *       *       *       *       *

For all these reasons, it seemed to me that _The Dangerous Age_ was
worthy to be presented to the public in a French translation. The _Revue
de Paris_ also thought it worthy to be published in its pages. I shall
be astonished if French readers do not confirm this twofold judgment,
offering to this foreign novel the same favourable reception that has
already been accorded to it outside its little native land.

MARCEL PRÉVOST.




_The Dangerous Age_




MY DEAR LILLIE,

Obviously it would have been the right thing to give you my news in
person--apart from the fact that I should then have enjoyed the amusing
spectacle of your horror! But I could not make up my mind to this
course.

All the same, upon my word of honour, you, dear innocent soul, are the
only person to whom I have made any direct communication on the subject.
It is at once your great virtue and defect that you find everything that
everybody does quite right and reasonable--you, the wife eternally in
love with her husband; eternally watching over your children like a
brood-hen.

You are really virtuous, Lillie. But I may add that you have no reason
for being anything else. For you, life is like a long and pleasant day
spent in a hammock under a shady tree--your husband at the head and your
children at the foot of your couch.

You ought to have been a mother stork, dwelling in an old cart-wheel on
the roof of some peasant's cottage.

For you, life is fair and sweet, and all humanity angelic. Your
relations with the outer world are calm and equable, without temptation
to any passions but such as are perfectly legal. At eighty you will
still be the virtuous mate of your husband.

Don't you see that I envy you? Not on account of your husband--you may
keep him and welcome! Not on account of your lanky maypoles of
daughters--for I have not the least wish to be five times running a
mother-in-law, a fate which will probably overtake you. No! I envy your
superb balance and your imperturbable joy in life.

I am out of sorts to-day. We have dined out twice running, and you know
I cannot endure too much light and racket.

We shall meet no more, you and I. How strange it will seem. We had so
much in common besides our portly dressmaker and our masseuse with her
shiny, greasy hands! Well, anyhow, let us be thankful to the masseuse
for our slender hips.

I shall miss you. Wherever you were, the atmosphere was cordial. Even on
the summit of the Blocksberg, the chillest, barest spot on earth, you
would impart some warmth.

Lillie Rothe, dear cousin, do not have a fit on reading my news:
_Richard and I are going to be divorced_.

Or rather, we _are_ divorced.

Thanks to the kindly intervention of the Minister of Justice, the affair
was managed quickly and without fuss, as you see. After twenty-two years
of married life, almost as exemplary as your own, we are going our
separate ways.

You are crying, Lillie, because you are such a kind, heaven-sent,
tender-hearted creature. But spare your tears. You are really fond of
me, and when I tell you that all has happened for the best, you will
believe me, and dry your eyes.

There is no special reason for our divorce. None at least that is
palpable, or explicable, to the world. As far as I know, Richard has no
entanglements; and I have no lover. Neither have we lost our wits, nor
become religious maniacs. There is no shadow of scandal connected with
our separation beyond that which must inevitably arise when two
middle-aged partners throw down the cards in the middle of the rubber.

It has cost my vanity a fierce struggle. I, who made it such a point of
honour to live unassailable and pass as irreproachable. I, who am
mortally afraid of the judgment of my fellow creatures--to let loose the
gossips' tongues in this way!

I, who have always maintained that the most wretched _ménage_ was better
than none at all, and that an unmarried or divorced woman had no right
to expect more than the semi-existence of a Pariah! I, who thought
divorce between any but a very young couple an unpardonable folly! Here
am I, breaking a union that has been completely harmonious and happy!

You will begin to realize, dear Lillie, that this is a serious matter.

For a whole year I delayed taking the final step; and if I hesitated so
long before realizing my intention, it was partly in order to test my
own feelings, and partly for practical reasons; for I _am_ practical,
and I could not fancy myself leaving my house in the Old Market Place
without knowing where I was going to.

My real reason is so simple and clear that few will be content to accept
it. But I have no other, so what am I to do?

You know, like the rest of the world, that Richard and I have got on as
well as any two people of opposite sex ever can do. There has never been
an angry word between us. But one day the impulse--or whatever you like
to call it--took possession of me that I must live alone--quite alone
and all to myself. Call it an absurd idea, an impossible fancy; call it
hysteria--which perhaps it is--I must get right away from everybody and
everything. It is a blow to Richard, but I hope he will soon get over
it. In the long run his factory will make up for my loss.

We concealed the business very nicely. The garden party we gave last
week was a kind of "farewell performance." Did you suspect anything at
all? We are people of the world and know how to play the game...!

If I am leaving to-night, it is not altogether because I want to be
"over the hills" before the scandal leaks out, but because I have an
indescribable longing for solitude.

Joergen Malthe has planned and built a little villa for me--without
having the least idea I was to be the occupant.

The house is on an island, the name of which I will keep to myself for
the present. The rooms are fourteen feet high, and the dining-room can
hold thirty-six guests. There are only two reception-rooms. But what
more could a divorced woman of my age require? The rest of the
house--the upper storey--consists of smaller rooms, with bay-windows and
balconies. My bedroom, isolated from all the others, has a glass roof,
like a studio. Another of my queer notions is to be able to look up from
my bed and see the sky above me. I think it is good for the nerves, and
mine are in a terrible condition.

So in future, having no dear men, I can flirt with the little stars in
God's heaven.

Moreover, my villa is remarkable for its beautiful situation, its
fortress-like architecture, and--please make a note of this--its
splendid inhospitality. The garden hedge which encloses it is as high as
the wall of the women's penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are
never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden,
and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the
estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss
and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything
given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence.
At the same time, I have engaged a first-rate cook, called Torp, who
seems to have the cookery of every country as pat as the Lord's Prayer.
I have no intention of living upon bread and water and virtue.

I shall manage without a footman, although I have rather a weakness for
menservants. But my income will not permit of such luxuries; or rather I
have no idea how far my money will go. I should not care to accept
Richard's generous offer to make me a yearly allowance.

I have also engaged a housemaid, whose name is Jeanne. She has the most
wonderful amber-coloured eyes, flaming red hair, and long, pointed
fingers, so well kept that I cannot help wondering where she got them
from. Torp and Jeanne will make the sum-total of my society, so that I
shall have every opportunity of living upon my own inner resources.

Dear Lillie, do all you can to put a stop to the worst and most
disgusting gossip, now you know the true circumstances of the case. One
more thing, in profound confidence, and on the understanding that you
will not say a word about it to my husband: Joergen Malthe, dear
fellow, formerly honoured me with his youthful affections--as you all
knew, to your great amusement. Probably, like a true man, he will be
quite frantic when he hears of my strange retirement. Be a little kind
and friendly to the poor boy, and make him understand that there is no
mystical reason for my departure.

Later on, when I have had time to rest a little, I shall be delighted to
hear from you; although I foresee that five-sixths of the letters will
be about your children, and the remaining sixth devoted to your
husband--whereas I would rather it was all about yourself, and our dear
town, with its life and strife. I have not taken the veil; I may still
endure to hear echoes of all the town gossip.

If you were here, you would ask what I proposed to do with myself. Well,
dear Lillie, I have not left my frocks nor my mirror behind me.
Moreover, time has this wonderful property that, unlike the clocks, it
goes of itself without having to be wound up. I have the sea, the
forest; my piano, and my house. If time really hangs heavy on my hands,
there is no reason why I should not darn the linen for Torp!

Should it happen by any chance--which God forbid--that I were struck
dead by lightning, or succumbed to a heart attack, would you, acting as
my cousin, and closest friend, undertake to put my belongings in order?
Not that you would find things in actual disorder; but all the same
there would be a kind of semi-order. I do not at all fancy the idea of
Richard routing among my papers now that we are no longer a married
couple.

With every good wish,
              Your cousin,
                       ELSIE LINDTNER.




MY DEAR, KIND FRIEND, AND FORMER HUSBAND,

Is there not a good deal of style about that form of address? Were you
not deeply touched at receiving, in a strange town, flowers sent by a
lady? If only the people understood my German and sent them to you in
time!

For an instant a beautiful thought flashed through my mind: to welcome
you in this way in every town where you have to stay. But since I only
know the addresses of one or two florists in the capitals, and I am too
lazy to find out the others, I have given up this splendid folly, and
simply note it to my account as a "might-have-been."

Shall I be quite frank, Richard? I am rather ashamed when I think of
you, and I can honestly say that I never respected you more than to-day.
But it could not have been otherwise. I want you to concentrate all your
will-power to convince yourself of this. If I had let myself be
persuaded to remain with you, after this great need for solitude had
laid hold upon me, I should have worried and tormented you every hour of
the day.

Dearest and best friend, there is some truth in these words, spoken by I
know not whom: "Either a woman is made for marriage, and then it
practically does not matter to whom she is married, she will soon
understand how to fulfil her destiny; or she is unsuited to matrimony,
in which case she commits a crime against her own personality when she
binds herself to any man."

Apparently, I was not meant for married life. Otherwise I should have
lived happily for ever and a day with you--and you know that was not the
case. But you are not to blame. I wish in my heart of hearts that I had
something to reproach you with--but I have nothing against you of any
sort or kind.

It was a great mistake--a cowardly act--to promise you yesterday that I
would return if I regretted my decision. I _know_ I shall never regret
it. But in making such a promise I am directly hindering you.... Forgive
me, dear friend ... but it is not impossible that you may some day meet
a woman who could become something to you. Will you let me take back my
promise? I shall be grateful to you. Then only can I feel myself really
free.

When you return home, stand firm if your friends overwhelm you with
questions and sympathy. I should be deeply humiliated if anyone--no
matter who--were to pry into the good and bad times we have shared
together. Bygones are bygones, and no one can actually realise what
takes place between two human beings, even when they have been
onlookers.

Think of me when you sit down to dinner. Henceforward eight o'clock will
probably be my bedtime. On the other hand I shall rise with the sun, or
perhaps earlier. Think of me, but do not write too often. I must first
settle down tranquilly to my new life. Later on, I shall enjoy writing
you a condensed account of all the follies which can be committed by a
woman who suddenly finds herself at a mature age complete mistress of
her actions.

Follow my advice, offered for the twentieth time: go on seeing your
friends; you cannot do without them. Really there is no need for you to
mourn for a year with crape on the chandeliers and immortelles around my
portrait.

You have been a kind, faithful, and delicate-minded friend to me, and I
am not so lacking in delicacy myself that I do not appreciate this in my
inmost heart. But I cannot accept your generous offer to give me money.
I now tell you this for the first time, because, had I said so before,
you would have done your best to over-persuade me. My small income is,
and will be, sufficient for my needs.

The train leaves in an hour. Richard, you have your business and your
friends--more friends than anyone I know. If you wish me well, wish that
I may never regret the step I have taken. I look down at my hands that
you loved--I wish I could stretch them out to you....

A man must not let himself be crushed. It would hurt me to feel that
people pitied you. You are much too good to be pitied.

Certainly it would have been better if, as you said, one of us had
died. But in that case you would have had to take the plunge into
eternity, for I am looking forward with joy to life on my island.

For twenty years I have lived under the shadow of your wing in the Old
Market Place. May I live another twenty under the great forest trees,
wedded to solitude.

How the gossips will gossip! But we two, clever people, will laugh at
their gossip.

Forgive me, Richard, to-day and always, the trouble I have brought upon
you. I would have stayed with you if I could. Thank you for all....

                                      ELSIE.

That my feeling for you should have died, is quite as incomprehensible
to me as to you. No other man has ever claimed a corner of my heart. In
a word, having considered the question all round, I am suffering simply
from a nervous malady--alas! it is incurable!




MY DEAR MALTHE,

We two are friends, are we not, and I think we shall always remain so,
even now that fate has severed our ways? If you feel that you have any
good reason for being angry with me now, then, indeed, our friendship
will be broken; for we shall have no further opportunity of becoming
reconciled.

If at this important juncture I not only hid the truth from you, but
deliberately misled you, it was not from any lack of confidence in you,
or with the wish to be unfriendly. I beg you to believe this. The fact
that I cannot even now explain to you my reasons for acting thus makes
it all the more difficult to justify my conduct to you. Therefore you
must be contented to take my word for it. Joergen Malthe, I would gladly
confide in you, but it is impossible. Call it madness, or what you will,
but I cannot allow any human being to penetrate my inner life.

You will not have forgotten that September evening last year, when I
spoke to you for the first time about one of my friends who was going to
separate from her husband, and who, through my intervention, asked you
to draw the plan of a villa in which she might spend the rest of her
days in solitude? You entered so completely into this idea of a solitary
retreat that your plan was almost perfect. Every time we met last year
we talked about the "White Villa," as we called it, and it pleased us to
share this little secret together. Nor were you less interested in the
interior of the house; in making sketches for the furniture, and
arranging the decorations. You took a real delight in this task,
although you were annoyed that you had no personal knowledge of your
client. You remember that I said to you sometimes in joke: "Plan it as
though it were for me"; and I cannot forget what you replied one day: "I
hate the idea of a stranger living in the house which I planned with you
always in my mind."

Judge for yourself, Malthe, how painful it was to leave you in error.
But I could not speak out then, for I had to consider my husband. For
this reason I avoided meeting you during the summer; I found it
impossible to keep up the deception when we were face to face.

It is I--I myself--who will live in the "White Villa." I shall live
there quite alone.

It is useless for me to say, "Do not be angry." You would not be what
you are if you were not annoyed about it.

You are young, life lies before you. I am old. In a very few years I
shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a
time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping
on your youth in order to vex you--your youth that you hate for my sake!
I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life
and the march of time are alike inexorable.

When I enter the new home you have planned for me, a lonely and divorced
woman, I shall think of you every day, and my thoughts will speak more
cordial thanks than I can set down coldly in black and white on this
paper.

I do not forbid you to write to me, but, save for a word of farewell, I
would prefer your silence. No letters exchanged between us could bring
back so much as a reflection of the happy hours we have spent together.
Hours in which we talked of everything, and chiefly of nothing at all.

I do not think we were very brilliant when we were together; but we were
never bored. If my absence brings you suffering, disappointment,
grief--lose yourself in your work, so that in my solitude I may still be
proud of you.

You taught me to use my eyes, and there is much, much in the world I
should like to see, for, thanks to you, I have learnt how beautiful the
world is. But the wisest course for me is to give myself up to my chosen
destiny. I shut the door of my "White Villa"--and there my story ends.

             Your
                 ELSIE LINDTNER.

Reading through my letter, it seems to me cold and dry. But it is harder
to write such a letter to a dear friend than to a stranger.




    LANDED ON MY ISLAND.
        CREPT INTO MY LAIR.

The first day is over. Heaven help me through those to come! Everything
here disgusts me, from the smell of the new woodwork and the half-dried
wallpapers to the pattering of the rain over my head.

What an idiotic notion of mine to have a glass roof to my bedroom! I
feel as though I were living under an umbrella through which the water
might come dripping at any moment. During the night this will probably
happen. The panes of glass, unless they are very closely joined
together, will let the water through, and I shall awake in a pool of
water.

Awake, indeed! If only I ever get to sleep! My head aches and burns from
sheer fatigue, but I have not even thought of getting into bed yet.

For the last year I have had plenty of time to think things over, and
now I am at a loss to understand why I have done this. Suppose it is a
piece of stupidity--a carefully planned and irrevocable folly? Suppose
my irritable nerves have played a trick upon me? Suppose ... suppose ...

I feel lonely and without will power. I am frightened. But the step is
taken; and I can never turn back. I must never let myself regret it.

This constant rain gives me an icy, damp feeling down my back. It gets
on my nerves.

What shall I come to, reduced to the society of two females who have
nothing in common with me but our sex? No one to speak to, no one to
see. Jeanne is certainly attractive to look at, but I cannot converse
with her. As to Torp, she suits her basement as a gnome suits his
mountain cave. She looks as though she was made to repopulate a desert
unaided. She wears stays that are crooked back and front.

Never in all my life have I felt so disappointed, and compelled to put a
good face upon a bad business, as when I splashed through the wet
garden and entered the empty house where there was not even a flower to
welcome my arrival. The rooms are too large and bare.... Why did I not
think of that before?

All the same, decorum must be maintained, and my entry was not
undignified.

Ah, the rain, the rain! Jeanne and Torp are still cleaning up. They mean
to go on half the night, scrubbing and sweeping as though we expected
company to-morrow. I start unpacking my trunk, take out a few things and
stop--begin again and stop again, horrified at the quantity of clothes
I've brought. It would have been more sensible to send them to one of
our beloved "charity sales." They are of no use or pleasure now. Black
merino and a white woollen shawl--what more do I want here?

God knows how I wish at the present moment I were back in the Old Market
Place, even if I only had Richard's society to bore me.

What am I doing here? What do I want here? To cry, without having to
give an account of one's tears to anyone?

Of course, all this is only the result of the rain. I was longing to be
here. It was not a mere hysterical whim. No, no....

It was my own wish to bury myself here.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yesterday I was all nerves. To-day I feel as fresh and lively as a
cricket.

We have been hanging the pictures, and made thirty-six superfluous holes
in the new walls. There is no way of concealing them. (I must write to
Richard to have my engravings framed.) It would be stretching a point to
say we are skilled picture-hangers; we were nearly as awkward as men
when they try to hook a woman's dress for her. But the pictures were
hung somehow, and look rather nice now they are up.

But why on earth did I give Torp my sketch of "A Villa by the Sea" to
hang in her kitchen? Was I afraid to have it near me? Or was it some
stupid wish to hurt _his_ feelings? _His_ only gift.... I feel ashamed
of myself.

Jeanne has arranged flowers everywhere, and that helps to make the house
more homelike.

The place is mine, and I take possession of it. Now the sun is shining.
I find pleasure in examining each article of furniture and remembering
the days when we discussed the designs together. I ought not to have let
him do all that. It was senseless of me.

       *       *       *       *       *

They are much to be envied who can pass away the time in their own
society. I am in my element when I can watch other people blowing
soap-bubbles; but to blow them myself....

I am not really clever at creating comfortable surroundings. Far from
it. My white villa always looks uninhabited, in spite of all the flowers
with which I allow Jeanne to decorate the rooms. Is it because
everything smells so new? Or because there are no old smells? Here there
are no whiffs of dust, smoke, or benzine, nor anything which made the
Old Market Place the Old Market Place. Everything is so clean here that
one hesitates to move a step. The boards are as shiny as though they
were polished silver.... This very moment Torp appeared in felt shoes
and implored me to get her a strip of oilcloth to save her kitchen
floor. I feel just the same; I scarcely dare defile this spotless
pitchpine.

       *       *       *       *       *

What is the use of all these discussions and articles about the equality
of the sexes, so long as we women are at times the slaves of an
inevitable necessity? I have suffered more than ever the last few days,
perhaps because I was so utterly alone. Not a human being to speak to.
Yes, I ought to have stayed in bed if only to conceal my ugliness. In
town I was wise. But here ...

       *       *       *       *       *

All the same I am proud of my self-control. Many women do not possess as
much.

The moon is in her first quarter; a cold dry wind is blowing up; it
makes one cough merely to hear it whistle.

I hate winds of all kinds, and here my enemy seems to have free entry. I
ought to have built my house facing south and in some hollow sheltered
from the wind. Unfortunately it looks to the north, straight across the
open sea.

I have not yet been outside the garden. I have made up my mind to keep
to this little spot as long as possible. I shall get accustomed to it. I
_must_ get accustomed to it.

Dear souls, how they worry me with their letters. Only Malthe keeps
silence. Will he deign to answer me?

Jeanne follows me with her eyes as though she wanted to learn some art
from me. What art?

Good heavens, what can that girl be doing here?

She does not seem made for the celibate life of a desert island. Yet I
cannot set up a footman to keep her company. I will not have men's eyes
prying about my house, I have had enough of that.

A manservant--that would mean love affairs, squabbles, and troubles; or
marriage, and a change of domestics. No, I have a right to peace, and I
will secure it. The worst that could happen to me would be to find
myself reduced to playing whist with Jeanne and Torp. Well, why not?

Torp spends all her evenings playing patience on the kitchen
window-sill. Perhaps she is telling her fortune and wondering whether
some good-looking sailor will be wrecked on the shores of her desert
island.

Meanwhile Jeanne goes about in silk stockings. This rather astonishes
me. Lillie reproved me for the pernicious custom. Are they a real
necessity for Jeanne, or does she know the masculine taste so well?

       *       *       *       *       *

From all the birch trees that stand quivering around the house a golden
rain is falling. There is not a breath of wind, but the leaves keep
dropping, dropping. This morning I stood on the little balcony and
looked out over the forest. I do not know why or wherefore, but such a
sense of quiet came over me. I seemed to hear the words: "and behold it
was very good." Was it the warm russet tint of the trees or the profound
perfume of the woods that induced this calm?

All day long I have been thinking of Malthe, and I feel so glad I have
acted as I have done. But he might have answered my letter.

Jeanne has discovered the secret of my hair. She asked permission to
dress it for me in the evening when my hair is "awake." She is quite an
artist in this line, and I let her occupy herself with it as long as she
pleased. She pinned it up, then let it down again; coiled it round my
forehead like a turban; twisted it into a Grecian knot; parted and
smoothed it down on each side of my head like a hood. She played with it
and arranged it a dozen different ways like a bouquet of wild flowers.

My hair is still my pride, although it is losing its gloss and colour.
Jeanne said, by way of consolation, that it was like a wood in late
autumn....

I should like to know whether this girl sprang from the gutter, or was
the child of poor, honest parents....

       *       *       *       *       *

"Thousands of women may look at the man they love with their whole soul
in their eyes, and the man will remain as unmoved as a stone by the
wayside. And then a woman will pass by who has no soul, but whose
artificial smile has a mysterious power to spur the best of men to
painful desire...."

One day I found these words underlined in a book left open on my table.
Who left it there, I cannot say; nor whether it was underlined with the
intention of hurting my feelings, or merely by chance.

       *       *       *       *       *

I sit here waiting for my mortal enemy. Will he come gliding in
imperceptibly or stand suddenly before me? Will he overcome me, or
shall I prove the stronger? I am prepared--but is that sufficient?

Torp is really too romantic! To-day it pleased her to decorate the table
with Virginia creeper. Virginia creeper festooned the hanging lamp;
Virginia creeper crept over the cloth. Even the joint was decked out
with wine-red leaves, until it looked like a ship flying all her flags
on the King's birthday. Amid all this pomp and ceremony, I sat all
alone, without a human being for whom I might have made myself smart. I,
who for the last twenty years, have never even dressed the salad without
at least one pair of eyes watching me toss the lettuce as though I was
performing some wonderful Indian conjuring trick.

A festal board at which one sits in solitary grandeur is the dreariest
thing imaginable.

I rather wish Torp had less "style," as she calls it. Undoubtedly she
has lived in large establishments and has picked up some habits and
customs from each of them. She is welcome to wait at table in white
cotton gloves and to perch a huge silk bow on her hair, which is
redolent of the kitchen, but when it comes to trimming her poor
work-worn nails to the fashionable pyramidal shape--she really becomes
tragic.

She "romanticises" everything. I should not be at all surprised if some
day she decked her kitchen range with wreaths of roses and hung up works
of art between the stewpans.

I am really glad I did not bring Samuel the footman with me. He could
not have waited on me better than Jeanne, and at any rate I am free from
his eyes, which, in spite of all their respectful looks, always reminded
me of a fly-paper full of dead and dying flies.

Jeanne's look has a something gliding and subtle about it that keeps me
company like a witty conversation. It is really on her account that I
dress myself well. But I cannot converse with her. I should not like to
try, and then to be disillusioned.

Men have often assured me that I was the only woman they could talk with
as though I were one of themselves. Personally I never feel at one with
menkind. I only understand and admire my own sex.

In reality I think there is more difference between a man and a woman
than between an inert stone and a growing plant. I say this ... I
who ...

       *       *       *       *       *

What business is it of mine? We were not really friends. The fact of her
having confided in me makes no demands on my feelings. If this thing had
happened five years ago, I should have taken it as a rather welcome
sensation--nothing more. Or had I read in the paper "On the--inst., of
heart disease, or typhoid fever," my peace of mind would not have been
disturbed for an hour.

I have purposely refrained from reading the papers lately. Chancing to
open one to-day, after a month's complete ignorance of all that had been
happening in the world, I saw the following headline: Suicide of a Lady
in a Lunatic Asylum.

And now I feel as shaken as though I had taken part in a crime; as
though I had had some share in this woman's death.

I am so far to blame that I abandoned her at a moment when it might
still have been possible to save her.... But this is a morbid notion! If
a person wants "to shuffle off this mortal coil" it is nobody's duty to
prevent her.

To me, Agatha Ussing's life or death are secondary matters; it is only
the circumstances that trouble me.

Was she mad, or no? Undoubtedly not more insane than the rest of us, but
her self-control snapped like a bowstring which is overstrained. She
saw--so she said--a grinning death's head behind every smiling face.
Merely a bee in her bonnet! But she was foolish enough to talk about it;
and when people laughed at her words with a good-natured contempt, her
glance became searching and fixed as though she was trying to convince
herself. Such an awful look of terror haunted her eyes, that at her gaze
a cold shiver, born of one's own fears and forebodings, ran through one.

She compelled us to realise the things we scarcely dare foresee....

I shall never forget a letter in which she wrote these words in a queer,
faltering handwriting:

"If men suspected what took place in a woman's inner life after forty,
they would avoid us like the plague, or knock us on the head like mad
dogs."

Such a philosophy of life ended in the poor woman being shut up in a
madhouse. She ought to have kept it to herself instead of posting it up
on the walls of her house. It was quite sufficient as a proof of her
insanity.

I cannot think what induced me to visit her in the asylum. Not pure
pity. I was prompted rather by that kind of painful curiosity which
makes a patient ask to see a limb which has just been amputated. I
wanted to look with my own eyes into that shadowy future which Agatha
had reached before me.

What did I discover? She had never cared for her husband; on the
contrary she had betrayed him with an effrontery that would hardly have
been tolerated outside the smart world; yet now she suffered the
torments of hell from jealousy of her husband. Not of her lovers; their
day was over; but of him, because he was the one man she saw. Also
because she bore his name and was therefore bound to him.

On every other subject she was perfectly sane. When we were left alone
together she said: "The worst of it is that I know my 'madness' will
only be temporary. It is a malady incident to my age. One day it will
pass away. One day I shall have got through the inevitable phase. But
how does that help me now?"

No, it was no more help to her than the dreadful paint with which she
plastered her haggard features.

It was not the least use to her....

Her death is the best thing that could have happened, for her own sake
and for those belonging to her. But I cannot take my thoughts off the
hours which preceded her end; the time that passed between the moment
when she decided to commit suicide until she actually carried out her
resolve.

       *       *       *       *       *

"If men suspected ..."

It may safely be said that on the whole surface of the globe not one man
exists who really knows a woman.

They know us in the same way as the bees know the flowers; by the
various perfumes they impart to the honey. No more.

How could it be otherwise? If a woman took infinite pains to reveal
herself to a husband or a lover just as she really is, he would think
she was suffering from some incurable mental disease.

A few of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of
bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally
discounted by some subtle deceit.

Do men and women ever tell each other the truth? How often does that
happen? More often than not, I think, they deal in half-lies, hiding
this, embroidering that, fact.

Between the sexes reigns an ineradicable hostility. It is concealed
because life has to be lived, because it is easier and more convenient
to keep it in the background; but it is always there, even in those
supreme moments when the sexes fulfil their highest destiny.

A woman who knows other women and understands them, could easily prove
this in so many words; and every woman who heard her--provided they were
alone--would confess she was right. But if a man should join in the
conversation, both women would stamp truth underfoot as though it were a
venomous reptile.

Men can be sincere both with themselves and others; but women cannot.
They are corrupted from birth. Later on, education, intercourse with
other women and finally marriage, corrupt them still more.

A woman may love a man more than her own life; may sacrifice her time,
her health, her existence to him. But if she is wholly a woman, she
cannot give him her confidence.

She cannot, because she dares not.

In the same way a man--for a certain length of time--can love without
measure. He can then be unlocked like a cabinet full of secret drawers
and pigeonholes, of which we hold the keys. He discloses himself, his
present and his past. A woman, even in the closest bonds of love, never
reveals more of herself than reason demands.

Her modesty differs entirely from that of a male. She would rather be
guilty of incest than reveal to a man the hidden thoughts which
sometimes, without the least scruple, she will confide to another woman.
Friendship between men is a very different thing. Something honest and
frank, from which consequently they withdraw without anger, mutual
obligation, or fear. Friendship between women is a kind of masonic oath;
the breaking of it a mutual crime. When two women friends quarrel, they
generally continue to carry deadly weapons against each other, which
they are only restrained from using by mutual fear.

There _are_ honest women. At least we believe there are. It is a
necessary part of our belief. Who does not think well of mother or
sister? But who _believes entirely_ in a mother or a sister? Absolutely
and unconditionally? Who has never caught mother or sister in a
falsehood or a subterfuge? Who has not sometimes seen in the heart of
mother or sister, as by a lightning flash, an abyss which the
profoundest love cannot bridge over?

Who has ever really understood his mother or sister?

The human being dwells and moves alone. Each woman dwells in her own
planet formed of centrifugal fires enveloped in a thin crust of earth.
And as each star runs its eternal course through space, isolated amid
countless myriads of other stars, so each woman goes her solitary way
through life.

It would be better for her if she walked barefoot over red-hot
ploughshares, for the pain she would suffer would be slight indeed
compared to that which she must feel when, with a smile on her lips, she
leaves her own youth behind and enters the regions of despair we call
"growing old," and "old age...."

All this philosophizing is the result, no doubt, of having eaten
halibut for lunch; it is a solid fish and difficult to digest.

Perhaps, too, having no company but Jeanne and Torp, I am reduced to my
own aimless reflections.

Just as clothes exercise no influence on the majority of men, so their
emotional life is not much affected by circumstances. With us women it
is otherwise. We really _are_ different women according to the dresses
we wear. We assume a personality in accord with our costume. We laugh,
talk and act at the caprice of purely external circumstances.

Take for instance a woman who wants to confide in another. She will do
it in quite a different way in broad daylight in a drawing-room than in
her little "den" in the gloaming, even if in both cases she happens to
be quite alone with her confidante.

If some women are specially honoured as the recipients of many
confidences from their own sex, I am convinced they owe it more to
physical than moral qualities. As there are some rooms of which the
atmosphere is so cosey and inviting that we feel ourselves at home in
them without a word of welcome, so we find certain women who seem to be
endowed with such receptivity that they invite the confidences of
others.

The history of smiles has never yet been written, simply because the few
women capable of writing it would not betray their sex. As to men, they
are as ignorant on this point as on everything else which concerns
women--not excepting love.

I have conversed with many famous women's doctors, and have pretended to
admire their knowledge, while inwardly I was much amused at their
simplicity. They know how to cut us open and stitch us up again--as
children open their dolls to see the sawdust with which they are stuffed
and sew them up afterwards with a needle and thread. But they get no
further. Yes--a little further perhaps. Possibly in course of time they
begin to discover that women are so infinitely their superiors in
falsehood that their wisest course is to appear once and for all to
believe them then and there....

Women's doctors may be as clever and sly as they please, but they will
never learn any of the things that women confide to each other. It is
inevitable. Between the sexes lies not only a deep, eternal hostility,
but the unfathomable abyss of a complete lack of reciprocal
comprehension.

For instance, all the words in a language will never express what a
smile will express--and between women a smile is like a masonic sign; we
can use them between ourselves without any fear of their being
misunderstood by the other sex.

Smiles are a form of speech with which we alone are conversant. Our
smiles betray our instincts and our burdens; they reflect our virtues
and our inanity.

But the cleverest women hide their real selves behind a factitious
smile.

Men do not know how to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or
less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or
subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask
her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who
revealed their whole natures in this way.

No woman speaks aloud, but most women smile aloud. And the fact that in
so doing we unveil all our artifice, all the whirlpool of our inmost
being to each other, proves the extraordinary solidarity of our sex.

When did one woman ever betray another?

This loyalty is not rooted in noble sentiment, but proceeds rather from
the fear of betraying ourselves by revealing things that are the secret
common property of all womanhood.

And yet, if a woman could be found willing to reveal her entire self?...

I have often thought of the possibility, and at the present moment I am
not sure that she would not do our sex an infinite and eternal wrong.

We are compounded so strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood,
that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of
our natures and find the starting point.

No man is capable of the task.

During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to
publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary. But has any woman
reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a
single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand
veils?

If indeed one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain,
unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would
she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover
of the book?

I once knew a man who, stirred by a good and noble impulse, and
confident of his power, endeavoured to "save" a very young girl whom he
had rescued from a house of ill-fame. He took her home and treated her
like a sister. He lavished time and confidence upon her. His pride at
the transformation which took place in her passed all bounds. The girl
was as grateful as a mongrel and as modest as the bride in a romantic
novel. He then resolved to make her his wife. But one fine day she
vanished, leaving behind her a note containing these words: "Many thanks
for your kindness, but you bore me."

During the whole time they had lived together, he had not grasped the
faintest notion of the girl's true nature; nor understood that to keep
her contented it was not sufficient to treat her kindly, but that she
required some equivalent for the odious excitements of the past.

       *       *       *       *       *

All feminine confessions--except those between relations which are
generally commonplace and uninteresting--assume a kind of beauty in my
eyes; a warmth and solemnity that excuses the casting aside of all
conventional barriers.

I remember one day--a day of oppressive heat and the heavy perfume of
roses--when, with a party of women friends, we began to talk about
tears. At first no one ventured to speak quite sincerely; but one thing
led to another until we were gradually caught in our own snares, and
finally we each gave out something that we had hitherto kept concealed
within us, as one locks up a deadly poison.

Not one of us, it appeared, ever cried because of some imperative inward
need. Tears are nature's gift to us. It is our own affair whether we
squander or economise their use.

Of all our confessions Sophie Harden's was the strangest. To her, tears
were a kind of erotic by-play, which added to the enjoyment of conjugal
life. Her husband, a good-natured creature, always believed he was to
blame, and she never enlightened him on the point.

Most of the others owned that they had recourse to tears to work
themselves up when they wanted to make a scene. But Astrid Bagge, a
gentle, quiet housewife and mother, declared she kept all her troubles
for the evenings when her husband dined at the volunteer's mess, because
he hated to see anyone crying. Then she sat alone and in darkness and
wept away the accumulated annoyances of the week.

When it came to my turn, I spoke the truth by chance when I said that,
however much I wanted to cry, I only permitted myself the luxury about
once in two years. I think my complexion is a conclusive proof that my
words were sincere.

There are deserts which never know the refreshment of dew or rain. My
life has been such a desert.

I, who like to receive confidences, have a morbid fear of giving them.
Perhaps it is because I was so much alone, so self-centred, in my
childhood.

The more I reflect upon life, the more clearly I see that I have not
laid out my talents to the best advantage. I have no sweet memories of
infidelity; I have lived irreproachably--and now I am very tired.

I sit here and write for myself alone. I know that no one else will ever
read my words; and yet I am not quite sincere, even with myself.

Life has passed me by; my hands are empty; now it is too late.

Once happiness knocked at my door, and I, poor fool, did not rise to
welcome it.

I envy every country wench or servant girl who goes off with a lover.
But I sit here waiting for old age.

Astrid Bagge.... As I write her name, I feel as though she were standing
weeping behind my back; I feel her tears dropping on my neck. I cannot
weep--but how I long for tears!

       *       *       *       *       *

Autumn! Torp has made a huge fire of logs in the open grate. The burning
wood gives out an intoxicating perfume and fills the house with cosey
warmth. For want of something better to do I am looking after the fire
myself. I carefully strip the bark from each log before throwing it on
the flames. The smell of burning birch-bark goes to my head like strong
wine. Dreams come and go.

Joergen Malthe, what a mere boy you are!

       *       *       *       *       *

The garden looks like a neglected churchyard, forgotten of the living.
The virginia creeper falls in blood-red streamers from the verandah. The
snails drag themselves along in the rain; their slow movements remind me
of women _enceinte_. The hedge is covered with spiders' webs, and the
wet clay sticks to one's shoes as one walks on the paths.

Yet there are people who think autumn a beautiful time of year!

       *       *       *       *       *

My will is paralysed from self-disgust. I find myself involuntarily
listening and watching for the postman, who brings nothing for me. There
are moments when my fingers seem to be feeling the smoothness of the
cream-laid "At Home" cards which used to be showered upon us, especially
at this season. Towards evening I grow restless. Formerly my day was a
_crescendo_ of activity until the social hours were reached. Now the
hours fall one by one in ashes before my eyes.

I am myself, yet not myself. There are moments when I envy every living
creature that has the right to pair--either from hate or from habit. I
am alone and shut out. What consolation is it to be able to say: "It was
my own choice!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A letter from Malthe.

No, I will not open it. I do not wish to know what he writes.... It is
a long letter.

       *       *       *       *       *

My nerves are quiet. But I often lie awake, and my sleep is broken. The
stars are shining over my head, and I never before experienced such a
sense of repose and calm. Is this the effect of the stars, or the
letter?

I am forty-two! It cannot be helped. I cannot buy back a single day of
my life. Forty-two! But during the night the thought does not trouble
me. The stars above reckon by ages, not by years, and sometimes I smile
to think that as soon as Richard returns home, the rooms in our house in
the Old Market will be lit up, and the usual set will assemble there
without me.

The one thing I should like to know is whether Malthe is still in
Denmark.

I would like to know where my thoughts should seek him--at home or
abroad.

I played with him treacherously when I called him "the youth," and
treated him as a mere boy. If we compare our ages it is true enough,
but not if we compare feelings.

Can there be anything meaner than for a woman to make fun of what is
really sacred to her? My feelings for Malthe were and still are sacred.
I myself have befouled them with my mockery.

But when I am lying in my bed beneath the vast canopy of the sky, all my
sins seem forgiven me. Fate alone--Fate who bears all things on his
shoulders--is to blame, and I wish nothing undone.

The letter will never be read. Never voluntarily by me.

       *       *       *       *       *

I do not know the day of the week. That is one step nearer the goal for
which I long. May it come to pass that the weeks and months shall glide
imperceptibly over me, so that I shall only recognise the seasons by the
changing tints of the forest and the alternations of heat and cold.

Alas, those days are still a long way off!

I have just been having a conflict with myself, and I find that all the
time I have been living here as though I were spending a summer holiday
in Tyrol. I have been simply deceiving myself and playing with the
hidden thought that I could begin my life over again.

I have shivered with terror at this self-deception. The last few nights
I have hardly slept at all. A traveller must feel the same who sails
across the sea ignorant of the country to which he journeys. Vaguely he
pictures it as resembling his native land, and lands to find himself in
a wilderness which he must plant and cultivate until it blossoms with
his new desires and dreams. By the time he has turned the desert into a
home, his day is over....

       *       *       *       *       *

If I could but make up my mind to burn that letter! I weigh it, first in
my right hand, then in my left. Sometimes its weight makes me happy;
sometimes it fills me with foreboding. Do the words weigh so heavy, or
only the paper?

Last night I held it close to the candle. But when the flame touched my
letter, I drew it quickly away.--It is all I have left to me now....

       *       *       *       *       *

Richard writes to me that Malthe has been commissioned to build a great
hospital. Most of our great architects competed for the work. He goes on
to ask whether I am not proud of "my young friend."

My young friend!...

       *       *       *       *       *

Jeanne spoke to me about herself to-day. I think she was quite
bewildered by the extraordinary fall of leaves which has almost blinded
us the last three days. She was doing my hair, and tracing a line
straight across my forehead, she remarked:

"Here should be a ribbon with red jewels."

I told her that I had once had the same idea, but I had given it up out
of consideration for my fellow creatures.

"But there are none here," she exclaimed,

I replied laughing:

"Then it is not worth while decking myself out!"

Jeanne took out the pins and let my hair down.

"If I were rich," she said, "I would dress for myself alone. Men neither
notice nor understand anything about it."

We went on talking like two equals, and a few minutes later, remembering
what I had observed, I gave her some silk stockings. Instead of thanking
me, she remarked so suddenly that she took my breath away:

"Once I sold myself for a pair of green silk stockings."

I could not help asking the question:

"Did you regret your bargain?"

She looked me straight in the face:

"I don't know. I only thought about my stockings."

Naturally such conversations are rather risky; I shall avoid them in
future. But the riddle is more puzzling than ever. What brought Jeanne
to share my solitude on this island?

       *       *       *       *       *

Now we have a man about the place. Torp got him. He digs in the garden
and chops wood. But the odour impregnates Torp and even reaches me.

He makes eyes at Jeanne, who looks at me and smiles. Torp makes a fuss
of him, and every night I smell his pipe in the basement.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have shut myself upstairs and played patience. The questions I put to
the cards come from that casket of memories the seven keys of which I
believed I had long since thrown into the sea. A wretched form of
amusement! But the piano makes me feel sad, and there is nothing else to
do.

Malthe's letter is still intact. I wander around it like a mouse round a
trap of which it suspects the danger. My heart meanwhile yearns to know
what words he uses.

He and I belong to each other for the rest of our lives. We owe that to
my wisdom. If he never sees me, he will never be able to forget me.

       *       *       *       *       *

How could I suppose it for a single moment! There is no possibility of
remaining alone with oneself! No degree of seclusion, nor even life in a
cell, would suffice. Strong as is the call of freedom, the power of
memory is stronger; so that no one can ever choose his society at will.
Once we have lived with our kind, and become filled with the knowledge
of them, we are never free again.

A sound, a scent--and behold a person, a scene, or a destiny, rises up
before us. Very often the phantoms that come thronging around me are
those of people whose existence is quite indifferent to me. But they
appear all the same--importunate, overbearing, inevitable.

We may close our doors to visitors in the flesh; but we are forced to
welcome these phantoms of the memory; to notice them and converse with
them without reserve.

People become like books to me. I read them through, turn the pages
lightly, annotate them, learn them by heart. Sometimes I am at fault; I
see them in a new light. Things that were not clear to me become plain;
what was apparently incomprehensible becomes as straightforward as a
commercial ledger.

It might be a fascinating occupation if I could control the entire
collection of these memories; but I am the slave of those that come
unbidden. In the town it was just the reverse; one impression effaced
another. I did not realise that thought might become a burden.

       *       *       *       *       *

The time draws on. The last few days my nerves have made me feverish and
restless; to-day for no special reason I opened and read all my letters,
except his. It was like reading old newspapers; yet my heart beat faster
with each one I opened.

Life there in the city runs its course, only it has nothing more to do
with me, and before long I shall have dropped out of memory like one
long dead. All these hidden fears, all this solicitude, these good
wishes, preachings and forebodings--there is not a single genuine
feeling among the whole of them!

Margethe Ernst is the only one of my old friends who is sincere and
does not let herself be carried away by false sentiment. She writes
cynically, brutally even: "An injection of morphia would have had just
the same effect on you; but everyone to his own taste."

As to Lillie, with her simple, gushing nature, she tries to write
lightly and cheerfully, but one divines her tears between the lines. She
wishes me every happiness, and assures me she will take Malthe under her
motherly wing.

"He is quiet and taciturn, but fortunately much engrossed with his plans
for the new hospital which will keep him in Denmark for some years to
come."

His work absorbs him; he is young enough to forget.

As to the long accounts of deaths, accidents and scandals, a year or two
ago they might have stirred me in much the same way as the sight of a
fire or a play. Now it amuses me quite as much to watch the smoke from
my chimney, as it ascends and seems to get caught in the tops of the
trees.

Richard is still travelling with his grief, and entertains me
scrupulously with accounts of all the sights he sees and of his lonely
sleepless nights. Are they always as lonely as he makes out?

As in the past, he bores me with his interminable descriptions and his
whole middle-class outlook. Yet for many years he dominated my senses,
which gives him a certain hold over me still. I cannot make up my mind
to take the brutal step which would free me once and for all from him. I
must let him go on believing that our life together was happy.

Why did I read all these letters? What did I expect to find? A certain
vague hope stirred within me that if I opened them I should discover
something unexpected.

The one remaining letter--shall I ever find courage to open it? I _will_
not know what he has written. He does not write well I know. He is not a
good talker; his writing would probably be worse. And yet, I look upon
that sealed letter as a treasure.

Merely touching it, I feel as though I was in the same room with him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lillie's letter has really done me good; her regal serenity makes itself
apparent beneath all she undertakes. It is wonderful that she does not
preach at me like the others. "You must know what is right for yourself
better than anybody else," she says. These words, coming from her, have
brought me unspeakable strength and comfort, even though I feel that she
can have no idea of what is actually taking place within me.

Life for Lillie can be summed up in the words, "the serene passage of
the days." Happy Lillie. She glides into old age just as she glided into
marriage, smiling, tranquil, and contented. Nobody, nothing, can disturb
her quietude.

It is so when both body and soul find their repose and happiness in the
same identical surroundings.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jeanne, with some embarrassment, asked permission to use the bathroom.
I gave her leave. It is quite possible that living in the basement is
not to her taste. To put a bathroom down there would take nearly a
fortnight, and during that time I shall be deprived of my own, for I
cannot share my bathroom or my bedroom with anyone, least of all a
woman....

I shall never forget the one visit I paid to the Russian baths and the
sight of Hilda Bang. Clothed, she presents rather a fine appearance,
with a good figure; but seen amid the warm steam, in nature's garb, she
seemed horrible.

I would rather walk through an avenue of naked men than appear before
another woman without clothes. This feeling does not spring from
modesty--what is it?

       *       *       *       *       *

How quiet it is here! Only on Wednesdays and Saturdays the steamer for
England goes by. I know its coming by the sound of the screw, but I take
care never to see it pass. What if I were seized with an impulse to
embark on her....

If one fine morning when Jeanne brought the tea she found the bird
flown?

The time is gone by. Life is over.

I am getting used to sitting here and stitching at my seam. My work does
not amount to much, but the mechanical movement brings a kind of
restfulness.

I find I am getting rather capricious. Between meals I ring two or three
times a day for tea--like a convalescent trying a fattening cure. Jeanne
attends to my hair with indefatigable care. Without her, should I ever
trouble to do it at all?

What can any human being want more than this peace and silence?

       *       *       *       *       *

If I could only lose this sense of being empty-handed, all would be
well. Yesterday I went down to the seashore and gathered little pebbles.
I carried them away and amused myself by taking them up in handfuls.
During the night I felt impelled to get up and fetch them, and this
morning I awoke with a round stone in each hand.

Hysteria takes strange forms. But who knows what is the real ground of
hysteria? I used to think it was the special malady of the unmated
woman; but, in later years, I have known many who had had a full share
of the passional life, legitimate and otherwise, and yet still suffered
from hysteria.

       *       *       *       *       *

I begin to realise the fascination of the cloister; the calm, uniform,
benumbing existence. But my comparison does not apply. The nun renounces
all will and responsibility, while I cannot give up one or the other.

I have reached this point, however; only that which is bounded by my
garden hedge seems to me really worthy of consideration. The house in
the Old Market Place may be burnt down for all I care. Richard may marry
again. Malthe may....

Yes, I think I could receive the news in silence like the monk to whom
the prior announces, "One of the brethren is dead, pray for his soul."
No one present knows, nor will ever know, whether his own brother or
father has passed away.

What hopeless cowardice prevents my opening his letter!




                                  EVENING.

Somebody should found a vast and cheerful sisterhood for women between
forty and fifty; a kind of refuge for the victims of the years of
transition. For during that time women would be happier in voluntary
exile, or at any rate entirely separated from the other sex.

Since all are suffering from the same trouble, they might help each
other to make life, not only endurable, but harmonious. We are all more
or less mad then, although we struggle to make others think us sane.

I say "we," though I am not of their number--in age, perhaps, but not in
temperament. Nevertheless I hear the stealthy footsteps of the
approaching years. By good fortune, or calculation, I have preserved my
youthful appearance, but it has cost me dear to economise my emotions.

Old age, in truth, is only a goal to be foreseen. A mountain to be
climbed; a peak from which to see life from every side--provided we
have not been blinded by snowfalls on the way. I do not fear old age;
only the hard ascent to it has terrors for me. The day, the hour, when
we realise that something has gone from our lives; when the cry of our
heart provokes laughter in others!

To all of us women comes a time in life when we believe we can conquer
or deceive time. But soon we learn how unequal is the struggle. We all
come to it in the end.

Then we grow anxious. Anxious at the coming of day; still more anxious
at the coming of night. We deck ourselves out at night as though in this
way we could put our anxiety to flight.

We are careful about our food and our rest; we watch that our smiles
leave no wrinkles.... Yet never a word of our secret terror do we
whisper aloud. We keep silence or we lie. Sometimes from pride,
sometimes from shame.

Hitherto nobody has ever proclaimed this great truth: that as they grow
older--when the summer comes and the days lengthen--women become more
and more women. Their feminality goes on ripening into the depths of
winter.

Yet the world compels them to steer a false course. Their youth only
counts so long as their complexions remain clear and their figures slim.
Otherwise they are exposed to cruel mockery. A woman who tries late in
life to make good her claim to existence, is regarded with contempt. For
her there is neither shelter nor sympathy.

It sometimes happens that a winter gale strips all the leaves from a
tree in a single night. When does a woman grow old in body and soul in
one swift and merciful moment? From our birth we are accursed.

I blame no one for my failure in life. It was in my own hands. If I
could live it through again from the start, it is more than probable I
should waste the years for a second time.




                                  CHRISTMAS EVE.

At this hour there will be festivities in the Old Market Place.
Richard's last letter touched me profoundly; something within me went
out toward his honest nature....

What is the use of all these falsehoods? I long for an embrace. Is that
shocking? We women are so wrapped in deceit that we feel ashamed of
confessing such things. Yet it is true, I miss Richard. Not the husband
or companion, but the lover.

What use in trying to soothe my senses by walking for hours through the
silent woods.

Lillie, in the innocence of her heart, sent me a tiny Christmas tree,
decorated by herself and her lanky daughters. Sweets and little presents
are suspended from the branches. She treats me like a child, or a sick
person.

Well, let it be so! Lillie must never have the vexation of learning that
I detested her girls simply because they represented the youthful
generation which sooner or later must supplant me.

I have made good use of my eyes, and I know what I have seen: the same
enmity exists between two generations as between the sexes.

While the young folk in their arrogant cruelty laugh at us who are
growing old, we, in our turn, amuse ourselves by making fun of them. If
women could buy back their lost youth by the blood of those nearest and
dearest to them, what crimes the world would witness!

How I used to hate Richard when I saw him so completely at his ease
among young people, and able to take them so seriously.

       *       *       *       *       *

Christmas Eve! In honour of Jeanne, I put on one of my very best
frocks--Paquin. Moreover, I have decorated myself with rings and chains
as though I were a silly Christmas Tree myself.

Jeanne has enjoyed herself to-day. She and Torp rose before it was light
to deck the rooms with pine branches. Over the verandah waves the
Swedish flag, which Torp generally suspends above her bed, in
remembrance of Heaven knows who. I gave myself the pleasure of
surprising Jeanne, by bestowing upon her my green _crêpe de Chine_. In
future grey and black will be my only wear.

After the obligatory goose, and the inevitable Christmas dishes, I spent
the evening reading the letters with which "my friends" honour me
punctiliously.

Without seeing the handwriting, or the signature, I could name from the
contents alone the writer of each one of them. They all write about the
honours which have befallen Joergen Malthe: a hospital here; a palace of
archives there. What does it matter to me? I would far rather they
wrote: "To-day a motor-car ran over Joergen Malthe and killed him on the
spot."

I have arrived at that stage.

But to-night I will not think about him; I would rather try to write to
Magna Wellmann. I may be of some use to her. In any case I will tell her
things that it will do her good to hear. She is one of those who take
life hard.




DEAR MAGNA WELLMANN,

It is with great difficulty that I venture to give you advice at this
moment. Besides, we are so completely opposed in habit, thought, and
temperament. We have really nothing in common but our unfortunate middle
age and our sex; therefore, how can it help you to know what I should do
if I were in your place?

May I speak quite frankly without any fear of hurting your feelings? In
that case I will try to advise you; but I can only do so by making your
present situation quite clear to you. Only when you have faced matters
can you hope to decide upon some course of action which you will not
afterwards regret. Your letter is the queerest mixture of self-deception
and a desire to be quite frank. You try to throw dust in my eyes, while
at the same time you are betraying all that you are most anxious to
conceal. Judging from your letter, the maternal feeling is deeply
ingrained in your nature. You are prepared to fight for your children
and sacrifice yourself for them if necessary. You would put yourself
aside in order to secure for them a healthy and comfortable existence.

The real truth is that your conscience is pricking you with a remorse
that has been instigated by others. Maternal sentiment is not your
strong point; far from it. In your husband's lifetime you did not try to
make two and two amount to five; and you often showed very plainly that
your children were rather an encumbrance than otherwise. When at last
your affection for them grew, it was not because they were your own
flesh and blood, but because you were thrown into daily contact with
these little creatures whom you had to care for.

Now you have lost your head because the outlook is rather bad. Your
family, or rather your late husband's people, have attempted to coerce
you in a way that I consider entirely unjustifiable. And you have
allowed yourself to be bullied, and therefore, all unconsciously, have
given them some hold over your life and actions.

You must not forget that your husband's family, without being asked,
have been allowing you a yearly income which permitted you to live in
the same style as before Professor Wellmann's death. They placed no
restrictions upon you, and made no conditions. Now, the family--annoyed
by what reaches their ears--want to insist that you should conform to
their wishes; otherwise they will withdraw the money, or take from you
the custody of the children. This is a very arbitrary proceeding.

Reflect well what they are asking of you before you let yourself be
bound hand and foot.

Are you really capable, Magna, of being an absolutely irreproachable
widow?

Perhaps there ought to be a law by which penniless widows with children
to bring up should be incarcerated in some kind of nunnery, or burnt
alive at the obsequies of their husbands. But failing such a law, I do
not think a grown-up woman is obliged to promise that she will
henceforth take a vow of chastity. One must not give a promise only to
break it, and, my dear Magna, I do not think you are the woman to keep a
vow of that kind.

For this reason you ought never to have made yourself dependent upon
strangers by accepting their money for the education of your children.
At the same time I quite see how hard it would be to find yourself
empty-handed with a pack of children all in need of something. If you
had not courage to try to live on the small pension allowed by the
State, you would have done better to find some means of earning a
livelihood with the help of your own people.

You never thought of this; while I was too much taken up with my own
affairs just then to have any superfluous energy for other people's
welfare or misfortune.

But now we come to the heart of the question. For some years past you
have confided in me--more fully than I really cared about. While your
husband was alive I often found it rather painful to be always looking
at him through the keyhole, so to speak. But this confidence justifies
me in speaking quite frankly.

My dear Magna, listen to me. A woman of your temperament ought never to
bind herself by marriage to any man, and is certainly not fit to have
children. You were intended--do not take the words as an insult--to lead
the life of a _fille de joie_. The term sounds ugly--but I know no other
that is equally applicable. Your vehement temperament, your insatiable
desire for new excitements--in a word, your whole nature tends that way.
You cannot deny that your marriage was a grave mistake.

There was just the chance--a remote one--that you might have met the
kind of husband to suit you: an eminently masculine type, the kind who
would have kept the whip-hand over you, and regarded a wife as
half-mistress, half-slave. Even then I think your conjugal happiness
would have ceased the first day he lost the attraction of novelty.

Professor Wellmann, your quiet, correct husband, was as great a torment
to you as you were to him. Without intending it, you made his life a
misery. The dreadful scenes which were brought about by your violent and
sensual temperament so changed his disposition that he became brutal;
while to you they became a kind of second nature, a necessity, like food
or sleep.

Magna, you will think me brutal, too, because I now tell you in black
and white what formerly I lacked the courage to say. Believe me, it was
often on the tip of my tongue to exclaim: "Better have a lover than
torment this poor man whose temperament is so different to your own."

I will not say you did not care for your husband. You learnt to see his
good qualities; but there was no true union between you. You hated his
work. Not like a woman who is jealous of the time spent away from her;
but because you believed such arduous brain work made him less ardent as
a lover. Although you did not really care for him, you would have
sacrificed all his fame and reputation for an hour of unreasoning
passion.

At his death you lost the breadwinner and the position you had gained
in the world as the wife of a celebrity. Your grief was sincere; you
felt your loneliness and loss. Then for the first time you clung to your
children, and erroneously believed you were moved by maternal feeling.
You honestly intended henceforward to live for them alone.

All went well for three months, and then the struggle began. Do you
know, Magna, I admired the way you fought. You would not give way an
inch. You wore the deepest weeds. Sheltered behind your crape, you
surrounded yourself by your children, and fought for your life.

This inward conflict added to your attractions. It gave you an air of
nobility you had hitherto lacked.

Then the world began to whisper evil about you while you were still
quite irreproachable.

No, after all there _was_ something to reproach you with, although it
was not known to outsiders. While you were fighting your instincts and
trying to live as a spotless widow, your character was undergoing a
change: against your will, but not unconsciously, you were become a
perfect fury. In this way your children acquired that timidity which
they have never quite outgrown. Strangers began to notice this after a
while, and to criticise your behaviour.

Time went on. You wrote that you were obliged to do a "cure" in a
nursing home for nervous complaints. When I heard this, I could not
repress a smile, in spite of your misfortunes. Nerve specialists may be
very clever, but can they be expected, even at the highest fees, to
replace defunct husbands. You were kept in bed and dosed with bromides
and sulphonal. After a few weeks you were pronounced quite well, and
left the home a little stouter and rather languid after keeping your bed
so long.

When you got home you turned the house upside-down in a frantic fit of
"cleaning." You walked for miles; you took to cooking; and at night,
having wearied your body out with incessant work, you tried to lull your
brain by reading novels.

What was the use of it all? The day you confessed to me that you had
walked about the streets all night lest you should kill yourself and
your children, I realised that your powers of resistance were at an end.
A week later you had embarked upon your first _liaison_. A month later
the whole town was aware of it.

That was about a year after the Professor's death. Six or seven years
have passed since then, and you have gone on from adventure to
adventure, all characterised by the same lamentable lack of discretion.
The reason for this lies in your own tendency to self-deception. You
want to make yourself and others believe that you are always looking for
ideal love and constant ties. In reality your motives are quite
different. You hug the traditional conviction that it would be
disgraceful to own that your pretended love is only an affair of the
senses. And yet, if you had not been so anxious to dupe yourself and
others, you might have gone through life frankly and freely.

The night is far advanced, moreover it is Christmas Eve.

I will not accuse you without producing proofs. Enclosed you will find
a whole series of letters, dated irregularly, for you only used to write
to me when I was away from home in the summer. In these letters, which I
have carefully collected, and for which I have no ground for reproaching
you, you will see yourself reflected as in a row of mirrors. Do not be
ashamed; your self-deception is not your fault; society is to blame. I
am not sending the letters back to discourage or hurt you; only that you
may see how, with each adventure, you have started with the same
sentimental illusions and ended with the same pitiable disenchantment.

A penniless widow turned forty--we are about the same age--with five
children has not much prospect of marrying again, however attractive she
may be. I have told you so repeatedly; but your feminine vanity refuses
to believe it. In each fresh adventure you have seen a possible
marriage--not because you feel specially drawn towards matrimony, but
because you are unwilling to leave the course free to younger women.

You have shown yourself in public with your admirers.

Neglecting the most ordinary precautions, you have allowed them to come
to your house; in a word, you have unblushingly advertised connections
which ought to have been concealed.

And the men you selected?

I do not wish to criticise your choice; but I quite understand why your
friends objected and were ashamed on your account.

At first people made the best of the situation, tacitly hoping that the
affairs might lead to marriage and that your monetary cares would thus
find a satisfactory solution. But after so many useless attempts this
benevolent attitude was abandoned, and scandal grew.

Meanwhile you, Magna, blind to all opinion, continued to follow the same
round: flirtation, sentiment, intimacy, adoration, submission, jealousy,
suspicion, suffering, hatred, and contempt.

The more inferior the man of your choice, the more determined you were
to invest him with extraordinary qualities. But as soon as the next one
appeared on the scene, you began to judge his predecessor at his true
value.

If all this had resulted in your getting the wherewithal to bring up
your children in comfort, I should say straight out: "My dear Magna, pay
no attention to what other people say, go your own road."

But, unfortunately, it is just the reverse; your children suffer. They
are growing up. Wanda and Ingrid are almost young women. In a year or
two they will be at a marriageable age. How much longer do you suppose
you can keep them in ignorance? Perhaps they know things already. I have
sometimes surprised a look in Wanda's eyes which suggested that she saw
more than was desirable.

In my opinion it is better for children not to find out these things
until they are quite old enough to understand them completely. But the
evil is done, and cannot be undone. And yet, Magna, the peace of mind of
these innocent victims is entirely in your hands. You can secure it
without making the sacrifice that your husband's family demands of you.

You have no right to let your children grow up in this unwholesome
atmosphere; and the atmosphere with which their dear mother surrounds
them cannot be described as healthy.

If your character was as strong as your temperament, you would not
hesitate to take all the consequences on your own shoulders. But it is
not so. You would shrink from the hard work involved in emigrating and
making yourself a new home abroad; at the same time you would be lowered
in your own eyes if you gave your children into the care of others.

Then, since for the next few years you will never resign yourself to
single life, and are not likely to find a husband, you must so arrange
your love affairs that they escape the attention of the world. Why
should you mix them up with your home life and your children? What you
need are prudence and calculation; but you have neither.

You will never fix your life on a firm basis until you have relegated
men to the true place they occupy in your existence. If you could only
make yourself see clearly the fallacy of thinking that every man you
meet is going to love you for eternity. A woman like yourself can
attract lovers by the dozen; but yours is not the temperament to inspire
a serious relationship which might become a lasting friendship. If you
constantly see yourself left in the lurch and abandoned by your admirers
before you have tired of them yourself, it is because you always delude
yourself on this point.

I know another woman situated very much as you are. She too has a large
family, and a weakness for the opposite sex. Everybody knows that she
has her passing love affairs, but no one quarrels with her on that
score.

She is really entitled to some respect, for she lives in her own house
the life of an irreproachable matron. She shows the tenderest regard for
the needs of her children, and never a man crosses her threshold but the
doctor.

You see, dear Magna, that I have devoted half my Christmas night to you,
which I certainly should not have done if I did not feel a special
sympathy for you. If I wind up my letter with a proposal that may wound
your feelings at first sight, you must try to understand that it is
kindly meant.

Living here alone, a few months' experience has shown me that my income
exceeds my requirements, and I can offer to supply you with a sum which
you can pay me back in a year or two, without interest. This would
enable you to learn some kind of business which would secure you a
living and free you from family interference. Consider it well.

I live so entirely to myself on this island that I have plenty of time
to ponder over my own lot and that of other people. Write to me when you
feel the wish or need to do so. I will reply to the best of my ability.
If I am very taciturn about my own affairs, it springs from an
idiosyncrasy that I cannot overcome. To make sure of my meaning I have
read my letter through once more, and find that it does not express all
I wanted to say. Never mind, it is true in the main. Only try to
understand that I do not wish to sit in judgment upon you, only to
throw some light on the situation. With all kind thoughts.

                 Yours,
                      ELSIE LINDTNER.

       *       *       *       *       *

It snows, and snows without ceasing. The trees are already wrapped in
snow, like precious objects packed in wadding. The paths will soon be
heaped up to their level. The snowflakes are as large as daisies. When I
go out they flutter round me like a swarm of butterflies. Those that
fall into the water disappear like shooting stars, leaving no trace
behind.

The glass roof of my bedroom is as heavy as a coffin-lid. I sleep with
my window open, and when there comes a blast of wind my eyes are filled
with snow. This morning, when I woke, my pillow-case was as wet as
though I had been crying all night.

Torp already sees us in imagination snowed up and receiving our food
supplies down the chimney. She is preparing for the occasion. Her hair
smells as though she had been singeing chickens, and she has
illuminated the basement with small lamps and red shades edged with
pearl fringes.

Jeanne is equally enchanted. When she goes outside without a hat her
hair looks like a burning torch against the snow. She does not speak,
but hums to herself, and walks more lightly and softly than ever, as
though she feared to waken some sleeper.

... I remember how Malthe and I were once talking about Greece, and he
gave me an account of a snowstorm in Delphi. I cannot recall a word of
his description; I was not listening, but just thinking how the snow
would melt when it fell upon his head.

He has fulfilled my request not to write. I have not had a line since
his only letter came. And yet....

       *       *       *       *       *

I have burnt his letter.

I have burnt his letter. A few ashes are all that remain to me.

It hurts me to look at the ashes. I cannot make up my mind to throw them
away.

I have got rid of the ashes. It was harder than I thought. Even now I
am restless.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am glad the letter is destroyed. Now I am free at last. My temptations
were very natural.

The last few days I have spent in bed. Jeanne is an excellent nurse. She
makes as much fuss of me as though I were really ill, and I enjoy it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Nirvana of age is now beginning. In the morning, when Jeanne brushes
my hair, I feel a kind of soothing titillation which lasts all day. I do
not trouble about dressing; I wear no jewellery and never look in the
glass.

Very often I feel as though my thoughts had come to a standstill, like a
watch one has forgotten to wind up. But this blank refreshes me.

Weeks have gone by since I wrote in my diary. Several times I have
tried to do so; but when I have the book in front of me, I find I have
nothing to set down.

In the twilight I sit by the fire like an old child and talk to myself.
Then Torp comes to me for the orders which she ends by giving herself,
and I let her talk to me about her own affairs. The other day I got her
on the subject of spooks. She is full of ghost stories, and relates them
with such conviction that her teeth chatter with terror. Happy Torp, to
possess such imagination!

Some days I hardly budge from one position, and can with difficulty
force myself to leave my table; at other times I feel the need of
incessant movement. The forest is very quiet, scarcely a soul walks
there. If I do chance to meet anyone, we glare at each other like two
wild beasts, uncertain whether to attack or to flee from each other.

The forest belongs to me....

The piano is closed. I never use it now. The sound of the wind in the
trees is music enough for me. I rise from my bed and listen until I am
half frozen. I, who was never stirred or pleased by the playing of
virtuosi!

I have no more desires. Past and future both repose beneath a shroud of
soft, mild fog. I am content to live like this. But the least event
indoors wakes me from my lethargy. Yesterday Torp sent for the sweep.
Catching sight of him in my room, I could not repress a scream. I could
not think for the moment what the man could be doing here.

Another time a stray cat took refuge under my table. I was not aware of
it, but no sooner had I sat down than I felt surcharged with
electricity. I rang for Jeanne, and when she came into the room the
creature darted from its hiding-place, and I was panic-stricken.

Jeanne carried it away, but for a long time afterwards I shivered at the
sight of her.

Whence comes this horror of cats? Many people make pets of them.
Personally I should prefer the company of a boa-constrictor.

       *       *       *       *       *

A man whose vanity I had wounded once took it upon himself to tell me
some plain truths. He did me this honour because I had not sufficiently
appreciated his attentions.

He assured me that I was neither clever nor gifted, but that I was
merely skilful at not letting myself be caught out, and had a certain
quickness of repartee. He was quite right.

What time and energy I have spent in trying to keep up this reputation
of being a clever woman, when I was really not born one!

My vanity demanded that I should not be run after for my appearance
only; so I surrounded myself with clever men and let them call me
intellectual. It was Hans Andersen's old tale of "The King's New
Clothes" over again.

We spoke of political economy, of statesmanship, of art and literature,
finance and religion. I knew nothing about all these things, but, thanks
to an animated air of attention, I steered safely between the rocks and
won a reputation for cleverness.

       *       *       *       *       *

In English novels, with their insipid sweetness that always reminds me
of the smell of frost-bitten potatoes, the heroine sometimes permits
herself the luxury of being blind, lame, or disfigured by smallpox. The
hero adores her just the same. How false to life! My existence would
have been very different if ten years ago I had lost my long eyelashes,
if my fingers had become deformed, or my nose shown signs of redness....

A red nose! It is the worst catastrophe that can befall a beautiful
woman. I always suspected this was the reason why Adelaide Svanstroem
took poison. Poor woman, unluckily she did not take a big enough dose!

       *       *       *       *       *




                                   JANUARY.

My senses are reawakening. Light and sound now bring me entirely new
impressions; what I see, I now also feel, with nerves of which hitherto
I did not suspect the existence. When evening draws on I stare into the
twilight until everything seems to shimmer before my eyes, and I dream
like a child....

Yesterday, before going to bed, I went on my balcony, as I usually do,
to take a last glance at the sea. But it was the starry sky that fixed
my attention. It seemed to reveal and offer itself to me. I felt I had
never really seen it before, although I sleep with it over my head!

Each star was to me like a dewdrop created to slake my thirst. I drank
in the sky like a plant that is almost dead for want of moisture. And
while I drank it in, I was conscious of a sensation hitherto unknown to
me. For the first time in my life I was aware of the existence of my
soul. I threw back my head to gaze and gaze. Night enfolded me in all
its splendour, and I wept.

What matter that I am growing old? What matter that I have missed the
best in life? Every night I can look towards the stars and be filled
with their chill, eternal peace.

I, who never could read a poem without secretly mocking the writer, who
never believed in the poets' ecstasies over Nature, now I perceive that
Nature is the one divinity worthy to be worshipped.

       *       *       *       *       *

I miss Margarethe Ernst; especially her amusing ways. How she glided
about among people, always ready to dart out her sharp tongue, always
prepared to sting. And yet she is not really unkind, in spite of her
little cunning smile. But her every movement makes a singular impression
which is calculated.

We amused each other. We spoke so candidly about other people, and lied
so gracefully to each other about ourselves. Moreover, I think she is
loyal in her friendship, and of all my letters hers are the best
written.

I should have liked to have drawn her out, but she was the one person
who knew how to hold her own. I always felt she wore a suit of chain
armour under her close-fitting dresses which was proof against the
assaults of her most impassioned adorers.

She is one of those women who, without appearing to do so, manages to
efface all her tracks as she goes. I have watched her change her tactics
two or three times in the course of an evening, according to the people
with whom she was talking. She glided up to them, breathed their
atmosphere for an instant, and then established contact with them.

She is calculating, but not entirely for her own ends; she is like a
born mathematician who thoroughly enjoys working out the most difficult
problems.

I should like to have her here for a week.

She, too, dreads the transition years. She tries in vain to cheat old
age. Lately she adopted a "court mourning" style of dress, and wore
little, neat, respect-impelling mantillas round her thin,
Spanish-looking face. One of these days, when she is close upon fifty,
we shall see her return to all the colours of the rainbow and to ostrich
plumes. She lives in hopes of a new springtide in life. Shall I invite
her here?

She would come, of course, by the first train, scenting the air with
wide nostrils, like a stag, and an array of trunks behind her!

No! To ask her would be a lamentable confession of failure.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last few days I have arrived at a condition of mind which occasions
great self-admiration. I am now sure that, even if the difference in our
ages did not exist, I could never marry Malthe.

I could do foolish, even mean things for the sake of the one man I have
loved with all my heart. I could humble myself to be his mistress; I
could die with him. But set up a home with Joergen Malthe--never!

The terrible part of home life is that every piece of furniture in the
house forms a link in the chain which binds two married people long
after love has died out--if, indeed, it ever existed between them. Two
human beings--who differ as much as two human beings always must do--are
compelled to adopt the same tastes, the same outlook. The home is built
upon this incessant conflict. The struggle often goes on in silence, but
it is not the less bitter, even when concealed.

How often Richard and I gave way to each other with a consideration
masking an annoyance that rankled more than a violent quarrel would have
done.... What a profound contempt I felt for his tastes; and, without
saying it in words, how he disapproved of mine!

No! His home was not mine, although we lived in it like an ideal couple,
at one on all points. My person for his money--that was the bargain,
crudely but truthfully expressed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just as one arranges the scenery for a _tableau vivant_, I prepared my
"living grave" in this house, which Malthe built in ignorance of its
future occupant. And here I have learnt that joy of possession which
hitherto I have only known in respect of my jewellery.

This house is really my home. My first and only home. Everything here is
dear to me, because it _is_ my own.

I love the very earthworms because they do good to my garden. The birds
in the trees round about the house are my property. I almost wish I
could enclose the sky and clouds within a wall and make them mine.

In Richard's house in the Old Market I never felt at home. Yet when I
left it I felt as though all my nerves were being torn from my body.

Joergen Malthe is the man I love; but apart from that he is a stranger
to me. We do not think or feel alike. He has his world and I have mine.
I should only be like a vampire to him. His work would be hateful to me
before a month was past. All women in love are like Magna Wellmann. I
shudder when I think of the big ugly room where he lives and works; the
bare deal table, the dusty books, the trunk covered with a travelling
rug, the dirty curtains and unpolished floor.

Who knows? Perhaps the sense of discomfort and poverty which came over
me the day I visited his rooms was the chief reason why I never ventured
to take the final step. He paced the carpetless floor and held forth
interminably upon Brunelleschi's cupola. He sketched its form in the air
with his hands, and all the time I was feeling in imagination their
touch upon my head. Every word he spoke betrayed his passion, and yet he
went on discussing this wretched dome--about which I cared as little as
for the inkstains on his table.

I expressed my surprise that he could put up with such a room.

"But I get the sunshine," he said, blushing.

I am quite sure that he often stands at his window and builds the most
superb palaces from the red-gold of the sunset sky, and marble bridges
from the purple clouds at evening.

Big child that you are, how I love you!

But I will never, never start a home with you!

Well, surely one gardener can hardly suffice to poison the air of the
place. If he is a nuisance I shall send him packing.

The man comes from a big estate. If he is content to cultivate my
cabbage patch, it must be because, besides being very ugly, he has some
undiscovered faults. But I really cannot undertake to make minute
inquiries into the psychical qualities of Mr. Under-gardener Jensen.

His photograph was sent by a registry office, among many others. We
examined them, Jeanne, Torp, and myself, with as deep an interest as
though they had been fashion plates from Paris. To my silent amusement,
I watched Torp unconsciously sniffing at each photograph as though she
thought smells could be photographed, too.

Prudence prompted me to select this man; he is too ugly to disturb our
peace of mind. On the other hand, as I had the wisdom not to pull down
the hut in which the former proprietor lived, the two rooms there will
have to do for Mr. Jensen, so that we can keep him at a little distance.

Torp asked if he was to take meals in the kitchen.

Certainly! I have no intention of having him for my opposite neighbour
at table. But, on the whole, he had better have his meals in his hut,
then we shall not be always smelling him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps we are really descended from dogs, for the sense of smell can so
powerfully influence our senses.

I would undertake in pitch darkness to recognise every man I know by the
help of my nose alone; that is, if I passed near enough to him to sniff
his atmosphere. I am almost ashamed to confess that men are the same to
me as flowers; I judge them by their smell. I remember once a young
English waiter in a restaurant who stirred all my sensibilities each
time he passed the back of my chair. Luckily Richard was there! For the
same reason I could not endure Herr von Brincken to come near me--and
equally for the same reason Richard had power over my senses.

Every time I bite the stalk of a pansy I recall the neighbourhood of
the young Englishman.

Men ought never to use perfumes. The Creator has provided them. But with
women it is different....

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day is my birthday. No one here knows it. Besides, what woman would
enjoy celebrating her forty-third birthday? Only Lillie Rothe, I am
sure!...

One day I was talking to a specialist about the thousands of women who
are saved by medical science to linger on and lead a wretched
semi-existence. These women who suffer for years physically and are
oppressed by a melancholy for which there seems to be no special cause.
At last they consult a doctor; enter a nursing home and undergo some
severe operation. Then they resume life as though nothing had happened.
Their surroundings are unchanged; they have to fulfil all the duties of
everyday life--even the conjugal life is taken up once more. And these
poor creatures, who are often ignorant of the nature of their illness,
are plunged into despair because life seems to have lost its joy and
interest.

I ventured to observe to the doctor with whom I was conversing that it
would be better for them if they died under the anæsthetic. The surgeon
reproved me, and inquired whether I was one of those people who thought
that all born cripples ought to be put out of their misery at once.

I did not quite see the connection of ideas; but I suppressed my desire
to close his argument by telling him of an example which is branded upon
my memory.

Poor Mathilde Bremer! I remember her so well before and after the
operation. She was not afraid to die, because she knew her husband was
devoted to her. But she kept saying to the surgeon:

"You must either cure me or kill me. For my own sake and for his, I will
not go on living this half-invalidish life."

She was pronounced "cured." Two years later she left her husband, very
much against his will, but feeling she was doing the best for both of
them.

She once said to me: "There is no torture to equal that which a woman
suffers when she loves her husband and is loved by him; a woman for whom
her husband is all in all, who longs to keep his devotion, but knows she
must fail, because physically she is no longer herself."

The life Mathilde Bremer is now leading--that of a solitary woman
divorced from her husband--is certainly not enviable. Yet she admits
that she feels far better than she used to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

Any one might suppose I was on the way to become a rampant champion of
the Woman's Cause. May I be provided with some other occupation! I have
quite enough to do to manage my own affairs.

Heaven be eternally praised that I have no children, and have been
spared all the ailments which can be "cured" by women's specialists!

       *       *       *       *       *

Ye powers! How interminable a day can be! Surely every day contains
forty-eight hours!

I can actually watch the seconds oozing away, drop by drop.... Or
rather, they fall slowly on my head, like dust upon a polished table. My
hair is getting steadily greyer.

It is not surprising, because I neglect it.

But what is the use of keeping it artificially brown with lotions and
pomades? Let it go grey!

Torp has observed that I take far more pleasure in good cooking than I
did at first.

My dresses are getting too tight. I miss my masseuse.

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day I inspected my linen cupboard with all the care of the lady
superior of an aristocratic convent. I delighted in the spectacle of the
snowy-white piles, and counted it all. I am careful with my money, and
yet I like to have great supplies in the house. The more bottles, cases,
and bags I see in the larder, the better pleased I am. In that respect
Torp and I are agreed. If we were cut off from the outer world by flood,
or an earthquake, we could hold out for a considerable time.

       *       *       *       *       *

If I had more sensibility, and a little imagination--even as much as
Torp, who makes verses with the help of her hymn-book--I think I should
turn my attention to literature. Women like to wade in their memories as
one wades through dry leaves in autumn. I believe I should be very
clever in opening a series of whited sepulchres, and, without betraying
any personalities, I should collect my exhumed mummies under the general
title of, "Woman at the Dangerous Age." But besides imagination, I lack
the necessary perseverance to occupy myself for long together with other
people's affairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

We most of us sail under a false flag; but it is necessary. If we were
intended to be as transparent as glass, why were we born with our
thoughts concealed?

If we ventured to show ourselves as we really are, we should be either
hermits, each dwelling on his own mountain-top, or criminals down in the
valleys.

       *       *       *       *       *

Torp has gone to evening service. Angelic creature! She has taken a
lantern with her, therefore we shall probably not see her again before
midnight. In consequence of her religious enthusiasm, we dined at
breakfast-time. Yes, Torp knows how to grease the wheels of her
existence!

Naturally she is about as likely to attend church as I am. Her vespers
will be read by one of the sailors whose ship has been laid up near here
for the winter. Peace be with her--but I am dreadfully bored.

I have a bitter feeling as though Jeanne and I were doing penance, each
in a dark corner of our respective quarters. The Sundays of my childhood
were not worse than this.

In the distance a cracked, tinkling bell "tolls the knell of parting
day." Jeanne and I are depressed by it. I have taken up a dozen
different occupations and dropped them all.

If it were only summer! I am oppressed as though I were sitting in a
close bower of jasmine; but we are in mid-winter, and I have not used a
drop of scent for months.

But, after all, Sundays were no better in the Old Market Place. There I
had Richard from morning till night. To be bored alone is bad; to be
bored in the society of one other person is much worse. And to think
that Richard never even noticed it! His incessant talk reminded me of a
mill-wheel, and I felt as though all the flour was blowing into my eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

I will take a brisk constitutional.

       *       *       *       *       *

What is the matter with me? I am so nervous that I can scarcely hold my
pen. I have never seen a fog come on so suddenly; I thought I should
never find my way back to the house. It is so thick I can hardly see the
nearest trees. It has got into the room, and seems to be hanging from
the ceiling. I am damp through and through.

The fire has gone out, and I am freezing. It is my own fault; I ought to
have rung for Jeanne, or put on some logs myself, but I could not summon
up resolution even for that.

What has become of Torp, that she is staying out half the day? How will
she ever find her way home? With twenty lanterns it would be impossible
to see ten yards ahead of one. My lamp burns as though water was mixed
with the oil.

Overhead I hear Jeanne pacing up and down. I hear her, although she
walks so lightly. She too is restless and upset. We have a kind of
influence on each other, I have noticed it before.

If only she would come down of her own accord. At least there would be
two of us.

I feel the same cold shivers down my back that I remember feeling long
ago, when my nurse induced me to go into a churchyard. I thought I saw
all the dead coming out of their graves. That was a foggy evening, too.
How strange it is that such far-off things return so clearly to the
mind.

The trees are quite motionless, as though they were listening for
something. What do they hear? There is not a soul here--only Jeanne and
myself.

Another time I shall forbid Torp to make these excursions. If she must
go to church, she shall go in the morning.

It is very uncanny living here all alone in the forest, without a
watch-dog, or a man near at hand. One is at the mercy of any passerby.

For instance, the other day, some tipsy sailors came and tried the
handle of the front-door.... But then, I was not in the least
frightened; I even inspired Torp with courage.

I have a feeling that Jeanne is sitting upstairs in mortal terror. I sit
here with my pen in my hand like a weapon of defence. If I could only
make up my mind to ring....

There, it is done! My hand is trembling like an aspen leaf, but I must
not let her see that I am frightened. I must behave as though nothing
had happened.

Poor girl! She rushed into the room without knocking, pale as a corpse,
her eyes starting from her head. She clung to me like a child that has
just awakened from a bad dream.

What is the matter with us? We are both terrified. The fog seems to have
affected our wits.

I have lit every lamp and candle, and they flicker fitfully, like
Jeanne's eyes.

The fog is getting more and more dense. Jeanne is sitting on the sofa,
her hand pressed to her heart, and I seem to hear it beating, even from
here.

I feel as though some one were dying near me--here in the room.

Joergen, is it you? Answer me, is it you?

Ah! I must have gone mad.... I am not superstitious, only depressed.

All the doors are locked and the shutters barred. There is not a sound.
I cannot hear anything moving outside.

It is just this dead silence that frightens us.... Yes, that is what it
is....

       *       *       *       *       *

Now Jeanne is asleep. I can hardly see her through the fog.

She sits there like a shadow, an apparition, and the fog floats over her
red hair like smoke over a fire.

I know nothing whatever about her. She is as reserved about her own
concerns as I am about mine. Yet I feel as though during this hour of
intense fear and agitation I had seen into the depths of her soul. I
understand her, because we are both women. She suffers from the eternal
unrest of the blood.

She has had a shock to her inmost feelings. At some time or other she
has been so deeply wounded that she cannot live again in peace.

She and I have so much in common that we might be blood-relations. But
we ought not to live under the same roof as mistress and servant.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gradually the fog is dispersing, and the lights burn brighter. I seem to
follow Jeanne's dreams as they pass beneath her brow. Her mouth has
fallen a little open, as if she were dead. Every moment she starts up;
but when she sees me she smiles and drops off again. Good heavens, how
utterly exhausted she seems after these hours of fear!

But somebody _is_ there! Yes ... outside ... there between the trees ...
I see somebody coming....

It is only Torp, with her lantern, and the dressmaker from the
neighbouring village. The moment she opened the basement door and I
heard her voice I felt quite myself again.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have eaten ravenously, like wolves. For the first time Jeanne sat at
table with me and shared my meal. For the first and probably for the
last time. Torp opened her eyes very wide, but she was careful to make
no observations.

My fit of madness to-night has taught me that the sooner I have a man of
some kind to protect the house the better.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jeanne has confided in me. She was too upset to sleep, and came knocking
at my bedroom door, asking if she might come in. I gave her permission,
although I was already in bed. She sat at the foot of my bed and told me
her story. It is so remarkable that I must set in down on paper.

Now I understand her nice hands and all her ways. I understand, too, how
it came about that I found her one day turning over the pages of a
volume by Anatole France, as though she could read French.

Her parents had been married twelve years when she was born. When she
was thirteen they celebrated their silver wedding. Until that moment in
her life she had grown up in the belief that they were a perfectly
united couple. The father was a chemist in a small town, and they lived
comfortably. The silver wedding festivities took place in their own
house. At dinner the girl drank some wine and felt it had gone to her
head. She left the table, saying to her mother, "I am going to lie down
in my room for a little while." But on the way she turned so giddy that
she went by mistake into a spare room that was occupied by a cavalry
officer, a cousin of her mother's. Too tired to go a step farther, she
fell asleep on a sofa in the darkened room. A little later she woke, and
heard the sounds of music and dancing downstairs, but felt no
inclination to join in the gaiety. Presently she dropped off again, and
when she roused for the second time she was aware of whispers near her
couch. In the first moment of awakening she felt ashamed of being caught
there by some of the guests. She held her breath and lay very still.
Then she recognized her mother's voice. After a few minutes she grasped
the truth.... Her mother, whom she worshipped, and this officer, whom
she admired in a childish way!

They lit the candles. She forced herself to lie motionless, and feigned
to be fast asleep. She heard her mother's exclamation of horror:
"Jeanne!" And the captain's words:

"Thank goodness she is sleeping like a log!"

Her mother rearranged her disordered hair, and they left the room.

After a few minutes she returned with a lamp, calling out:

"Jeanne, where are you, child? We have been searching all over the
house!"

Her pretended astonishment when she discovered the girl made the whole
scene more painful to Jeanne. But gathering up her self-control as best
she could, she succeeded in replying:

"I am so tired: let me have my sleep out."

Her mother bent over her and kissed her several times. The child felt as
though she would die while submitting to these caresses.

This one hour, with its cruel enlightenment, sufficed to destroy
Jeanne's joy in life for ever. At the same time it filled her mind with
impure thoughts that haunted her night and day. She matured
precociously in the atmosphere of her own despair.

There was no one in whom she could confide; alone she bore the weight of
a double secret, either of which was enough to crush her youth.

She could not bear to look her mother in the face. With her father, too,
she felt ill at ease, as though she had in some way wronged him.
Everything was soiled for her. She had but one desire; to get away from
home.

About two years later her mother was seized with fatal illness. Jeanne
could not bring herself to show her any tenderness. The piteous glance
of the dying woman followed all her comings and goings, but she
pretended not to see it. Once, when her father was out of the room, her
mother called Jeanne to the bedside:

"You know?" she asked.

Jeanne only nodded her head in reply.

"Child, I am dying, forgive me."

But Jeanne moved away from the bed without answering the appeal.

No sooner had the doctor pronounced life to be extinct than she felt a
strange anxiety. In her great desire to atone in some way for her past
harshness, the girl resolved that, no matter what befell her, she would
do her best to hide the truth from her father.

That night s