Chapter II: Part 2

I don’t live now as I used to live, and I have no goal to strive for; but I have no cares, much less do I feel in despair about anything. Truly, I am very comfortable in mind and body. I should not mind living for ever this sort of life. Yet at the same time I should feel no alarm if some one came and said, “You must die to-night.”

* * * * *

When I consider it in broad daylight, I have a heap of enjoyments, small and insignificant, but perfectly unclouded enjoyments.

* * * * *

Yes, here I am laid up with measles—at my age—a fiery rash, and everything else. Perhaps I shall get whooping-cough next? It would be much the best plan if one could have every childish complaint at once and have done with it. It is boring in this magnificent carbolic-scented clinic; but the nursing is good, and it is said to be healthy to be bored. I always fancied the much spoken about self-sacrifice nurses to be an old wives’ tale.

In the room next mine, there is the most passionate little monster of a boy nine months old, and no one would believe it, but all the nurses are willing to give up their sorely needed night’s rest for his sake. I, for my part, wish he was in a hot place.

And then they actually ask me if I wouldn’t like to have him “in my bed for a little.” Heaven protect me and my well-conditioned intellect! Oh! I pity the poor women who have several little children at the same time! I’d like to know how many mothers really feel for their children—_because_ it is their children.

Richard will get it with that wonder of a child. He boasts about his teeth, but he says nothing about the pain getting those teeth has cost him.

* * * * *

Yesterday I had a visit from a convalescent, who went round paying visits to the patients who were still lying in bed. I shall make friends with her. She amuses me. How well I understood that there can be a certain charm in studying bacteria and bacilli—small causes, huge results.

Frankly, I thought at first that she had been in a reformatory. There was something about her that gave the impression that she must have been under restraint. I was quite prepared that she would confess to having committed some crime. But no, that wasn’t it.

She had only been in all innocence a nun for twenty-two years. Twenty-two years a nun! Think of it! There were the years, too, that she was pupil and novice, making altogether twenty-six years behind the walls of a convent, subjected to the convent discipline and the weary convent habit. And now she has broken loose, like a prisoner who makes a rope of his bedclothes to escape over walls to freedom.

She had compelled—how, she did not disclose—the Church to set her at liberty, and now was beginning to live her own life for the first time. The life which she left at sixteen she has now taken up again at the age of forty-two. She looks like a person of sixty.

I could not forbear putting the indiscreet question, why she had broken away? And she replied, what was evidently the truth, that when she noticed she was beginning to grow old, a doubt arose within her as to whether the life in the world outside was not richer than the life behind the convent walls. She has given all her large fortune to the Church, and now lives on a scanty allowance grudgingly doled out to her by one of the sisters.

But she is happy as a queen in two little rooms, where she is her own mistress, able to eat and drink when she wants to, and as much as she likes. And she can serve her God unbidden by the ding-dong of the chapel bell—for she has not abjured her faith.

The one desire of her heart now is to find a man who’ll marry her. Her modesty is certainly touching. She doesn’t mind who he is, or what he looks like, if only she may be granted the wonderful happiness of having a husband. I lied my utmost to comfort her.

And if she can’t get a husband, she intends to adopt a child.

A really sick, starving, miserable child. I said tamely, that if I cherished—as God forbid that I should—such a fad, I would, at all events, seek out a healthy, pretty, and well-nourished infant. Whereupon she answered, “I don’t want a child to live for my sake; I want to live for the sake of a child.” She is a fine, but rather queer creature. And she has promised to come and see me every day.

* * * * *

Sister Ethel has bet me a palm—she has obviously an empty tub in her room—that if once I had the little boy next door with me for an hour, I should take him to my heart.

I would rather give her the palm straight off, and have nothing to do with the little boy; but still, if it gives her any pleasure, well, I’ll have him this afternoon, but directly the hour is over, clean sheets.

* * * * *

To my eternal shame I am bound to confess that I have lost the palm. It may be that all the nun’s sentimental gabble has affected my brain! I, who abhor the scent of little children, and shudder to touch them.

He lay perfectly still and squinted up at me, sucking a finger. It was the little finger. I really shouldn’t mind losing another palm, but my pride, God be praised, prevents my giving expression to the wish.

* * * * *

He doesn’t cry when he is with me. Nobody can understand it. In the night when he was crying, I, foolish old person, rose from my bed of measles, and went to look in on him. I thought the nurse had gone away. It was rather a painful situation.

DEAR PROFESSOR ROTHE,[1]

Your letter was such a shock to me that I could not answer it at once.... That is why I sent you the brief telegram in reply, the words of which I am sorry I must repeat, “I know nothing about the matter.” Lili has never spoken of it to me, or made the least allusion which could cause me to suspect such a thing. I may truthfully say that I never heard her mention the name of Director Schlegel. My first idea was that Lili had gone out of her mind, and I was surprised that you, a medical man, should not have come to the same conclusion.

But, after thinking it over for the last two days, I have changed my opinion. I think I am beginning to understand what has happened, and I beg you to hold me alone responsible for what I am going to say.... I am only making suppositions. Lili has not broken her marriage vows. Any suspicion of such a thing is out of the question, her nature was too upright, too loyal.... If she appeared to you and the world happy in her married life, it was because she really was so. I entreat you to believe this.

Lili, who never told even a conventional lie, who watched over her children like an old-fashioned mother, careful of what they read and what plays they saw—how could she carry on an intrigue unknown to you and them? Perfectly impossible, my dear Professor. I don’t say that she didn’t speak the words you heard, but that you must have put a wrong interpretation on them.

Not once, but thousands of times, Lili has talked about you to me. She loved and honoured you. You were her ideal man, husband, and father.

She used literally to become eloquent on the subject of your operations.... She studied Latin in order that she might understand your scientific books, while, in spite of her natural repulsion from the sight of such things, she attended your anatomy classes and demonstrations.

When Lili said, “I love Schlegel and have loved him for years,” her words did not mean, “And all that time my love for you was extinct.”

No, Lili cared for Schlegel, and for you, too.... Probably you are saying to yourself, “A woman must love one man or the other.”

With some show of reason you will argue, “In leaving my house, at any rate, she proved that Schlegel alone claimed her affection.”

Nevertheless I maintain that you are wrong.

Lili showed every sign of a sane, well-balanced nature. Well, her famous serenity and calmness deceived us all. Behind this serene exterior was the most feminine of all feminine qualities—the fanciful imagination of the visionary. Do you or I know anything about her first girlish dreams? Have you, in spite of your happy life together, ever really understood her innermost soul? Forgive me, but I do not think you have.

When a man possesses a woman as completely as you possessed Lili, he thinks himself quite safe. You never doubted for a moment that, having you, she could wish for anything else.

You are not only a clever and capable man, you are kind, and an entertaining companion; in short, you have many excellent qualities which Lili exalted to the skies. But your nature is not very poetical; you are, in fact, rather prosaic, and only believe what you see.

Contrast this with Lili’s immense forbearance. You remember how we used to laugh when she defended some criminal who was beyond all defence or apology. Something intense and far-seeing came into her expression, and her heart, prompted such a line of argument which reason could not support. She stood all alone in her sympathy, facing cold and incredulous people.

Then recollect the pleasure it gave her to discuss religious and philosophical questions.

She was not “religious” in the common acceptation of the word. But she liked to get at the bottom of things, and to use her imagination. We others were indifferent or frankly bored.

And Lili was so gentle she gave way to us.

Recall, too, her passion for flowers. She felt a physical pang to see cut flowers with their stalks out of water. Once I saw her buy up a flower girl’s whole stock, because the poor things wanted water. You and your children have no love of flowers. As a doctor, you are inclined to think it unhealthy to have plants in your rooms; consequently there were none and Lili never grumbled.

Lili did not care for modern music. César Franck wearied her, and Wagner gave her a headache. An old-fashioned harpsichord would be her favourite instrument, whereas at home her daughters thundered out Rubinstein and Wagner upon a concert grand, and you, dear Professor, when in a good humour, strode about the house whistling horribly out of tune.

Finally, Lili liked quiet, musical speech, and she was surrounded by people who talked at the top of their voices.

... She was happy because she willed to be happy. She had made up her mind that she was the luckiest woman in existence ... happy in everything, and she was deeply grateful to you. But in the depths of her heart—so deep down that it never rose to the surface even as a dream—lay that secret trouble which has caused the present mischief.

I know nothing of her relations to Schlegel, but I think I may venture to say that they were chiefly limited to intercourse of the soul; ... and so were fatal. Have you ever noticed the _timbre_ of Schlegel’s voice? He spoke slowly and so softly; I can quite believe it attracted your wife in the beginning; and that afterwards gradually, and almost imperceptibly, she gravitated towards him.

The man is now at death’s door, and can never explain what passed between them—even admitting that there was anything wrong. As far as I know, Schlegel was infatuated with a totally different woman. Had he been really in love with Lili, would he have been content with a few words and an occasional pressure of her hand?

Why, then, has Lili left you, and why does she refuse to give you an explanation? Why does she allow you to draw the worst conclusions?

I will tell you. Lili is in love with two men at the same time. Their different personalities and natures satisfy both sides of her character. If Schlegel had not fallen from his horse and broken his back, thereby losing all his faculties, Lili would have remained with you and continued to be a model wife and mother.

In the same way, had you been the victim of the accident, she would have forgotten all about Schlegel, and would have lived for you alone.

... Lili had not the strength to fight the first sharp anguish. The shock bewildered her, and the love of her imagination seemed to her at the moment the true one. She felt she was betraying you, Schlegel, and herself; and since self-sacrifice had become the law of her life, she was prepared to renounce everything as a proof of her love.

You, Professor Rothe, have acted very foolishly. You have done just what any average conventional man would have done. Your hurt vanity silenced the voice of your heart.

You had the choice of thinking two things: either Lili was mad, or she was responsible for her actions. You were convinced that she was sane, and playing you false in cold blood....

You write that you have only taken your two elder daughters into your confidence. How could you have found it in your heart to do this...?

Lili knew you better than I supposed. She knew that behind your apparent kindness there lurked a cold, self-satisfied nature. She understood that she would be accounted a stranger and a sinner in your house the moment you discovered in her a thought or sentiment that was not subordinate to your will.

You have let her go, believing that she had been playing a pretty part behind your back, and that I was her confidante, and perhaps also the instigator of her wicked deeds.

Lili has taken refuge with her children’s old nurse.

How significant! Lili, who had so many friends, knows by a subtler instinct that none of them would befriend her in her misfortune. If you, Professor Rothe, were a generous-hearted man, you would explain to the chief doctor at the Infirmary Lili’s great desire to stay near Schlegel until the end comes.

She loves you, and it would fill her with grateful joy.... If Lili had your consent to be near Schlegel she would certainly not refuse to come back to her wifely duties as soon as he was dead. At first she might not be able to conceal her grief, and then it would be your task to help her to regain her peace of mind.... Schlegel was a man, but had he been a portrait or a character in a novel, Lili would have fallen in love with him just the same, because her love was purely of the imagination.

You must do what you please. But one thing I wish you to understand.... If you are not going to act in the matter I shall act. I confess openly that I am a selfish woman, but I am very fond of Lili, and if you abandon her in this cruel and senseless way I shall have her to live with me here, and shall do my best to console her for the loss of an ungrateful husband, and a pack of stupid, undemonstrative children.

One of Lili’s tears is worth more than all your masculine ebulitions of wrath.

One word more before I finish. Lili, so far as I can remember, is a year older than I am. Could you not, woman’s specialist as you are, have found some excuse for her in this fact? Had Lili been fifty-eight or thirty-five, all this would never have happened. I do not care for strangers to look into my personal affairs, and although you are my cousin’s husband, you are practically a stranger to me. Nevertheless, I may remind you that women at our time of life pass through critical moments, as I know by daily experiences. A week or two ago it might have been impossible to write a letter such as this. I should probably have reeled off pages of incoherent abuse.

Show Lili that your love was not selfishness pure and simple.

With kind regards.

Sincerely yours,

ELSIE LINDTNER.

[1] Extracts from an earlier letter of Elsie Lindtner’s to Professor Rothe, in “The Dangerous Age,” are given here again, as they throw light on the episode which follows.

DEAR PROFESSOR ROTHE,

Lili has closed her eyes never to open them again. It will scarcely be a great blow to you and yours after what has passed; much more will it be a relief. For her, indeed, it was so.

I feel it my duty to Lili, not to you, to write this letter. You may make what use you please of it. It was I who procured Lili the sleeping draught, for which she had such a burning desire. With my hand in hers I sat beside her till she was cold, and I do not repent that I had the courage to commit what you, as a physician, will call a crime.

A few days before she fell asleep Lili entrusted a packet of letters to my care. I read them in the night, and now lay them in the coffin under her head. These letters were not to be read by the unauthorised, and you have become in relation to Lili one of the unauthorised.

You have called hers a harlot-nature—not in a moment of excitement, but because, after weighty consideration, you arrived at a conclusion to which the word was appropriate. It is not in my power to give you the satisfaction which you deserve, but I wish that the hour may come in which you will see what a desperate wrong you and your abominable children have done Lili.

Harlot-nature, indeed! You can say that of Lili to whom you were married for twenty years—Lili, the purest of beings!

You say, “She married me, she bore me children, she professed to love me, and all the time she had a lover behind my back. So she was of a harlot-nature!”

Professor Rothe, permit me to accompany you into your most private consulting room, the room in which you examine the most modest of your lady patients. Let me have it out with you, and inquire into your secret motives. It is possible that your modesty will be shocked, but you shall hear what I have to say on Lili’s behalf, and on those words, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”

When you married her your choice was made according to the dictates of your heart, and fell on a very young girl who lived on the blue heights of idealism. She was your wife, your friend, the mother of your children, the good angel of your home. And would you dare add that she was your love also? Yes. You think that because she loved you, and you loved her, and because you took her in your arms as your wife, that she was, of course your love....

But I tell you Lili was never your love, and that she never had a lover. And the whole time you have known it perfectly well. Answer me, if you like, “There are thousands and thousands of women who, like Lili, are without feeling in this respect ... still she loved another, and so deceived me.”

Is a rose less red and fragrant, because there are thousands of other red sweet-smelling roses?

But Lili’s nature was so pure, so refined, that this deficiency as you would call it, did not exist for her. She knew what it meant, for she was not ignorant. She understood in others what she did not recognise in herself. She lived for you, her children, and her household, her own beautiful world, so essential was it for her to shed light and spread joy around her.

From this arose that wonderful harmony of her being, making of the non-waking of what was dormant within her, neither a trial nor a renunciation. If Lili had been blind she would have had the same happy nature, and would have learned the beauty of joyousness through the eyes of every seeing soul.

There never arose within her, as in the case of so many poor women, a conscious renunciation of the fire of the senses.

How infinitely she must have loved and reverenced you, to have been able to tolerate without complaint, without abhorrence and a sense of renunciation, the position of being your wife for so many years.

Schlegel was not her lover, though she loved him, and she was more intimate with him than I thought at first ... and, listen, she loved him with unlimited abandon, because he did not possess a husband’s rights to lord it over her, and did not assume them. This _she_ was unconscious of. But there existed a ... a difference between her feelings for you and for him. He personified all that she had dreamed in her childish years of “Love,” and continued to personify it till her last hour.

Once she loved you thus, too, and would have gone on loving you in the same way if you had not desecrated her without awakening the woman within her.

Lili was the Sleeping Beauty who slumbered eternally. No knight ever roused her from her sleep. But you, the man to whom she presented her life’s happiness, called her harlot-natured!

Her last days were given up to a despairing desire for death and pardon for the sin which she had never committed.

The Lili who came over here was so changed that I hardly knew her. My first thought as she touched me and uttered my name was, “Who is to blame for this?” It was not only a broken-hearted woman, but a detested and ill-treated human creature who flew from the pursuit of her persecutors to die, deserted, in a foreign land.

The Lili I once knew used to come into a room as the sunshine penetrates a wood, like joy itself. Every one could see through her radiant exterior right into the floor of her pure, white soul.

But the Lili who came over here trembled in every limb and dared not meet the eyes of anybody. Schlegel lies in his grave. When he lived I regarded him as indifferently as I should any stranger. Now my thoughts go out to him full of thankfulness.

And Lili came home to you and ate the bread of humiliation for four long years in your house, while people admired you because you had pardoned her so magnanimously. Your abominable children looked down on their mother and behaved to her as to one not responsible for her actions. Dancing went on in your house, Professor Rothe, and Lili sat upstairs alone in her room. Betrothal festivities were celebrated by your family, while the mistress of the house was said to be ill, so that her pale, grief-stricken face should not cast a shadow on the festive scene.

I did the little I could, all that was in my power to win back the old, dear Lili, but it was too late. One cannot say that her mind was under a cloud, but she brooded day and night over a problem which she could not solve. Mostly she sat looking down on her hands, which were never still. Sometimes she talked of the children. She had once overheard Edmée say to one of the maids, it would be much better if mother were sent to an institution. Those words she could never forget.

Professor Rothe! Time after time unhappy women have come to you to be consoled, and helped by your explaining to them that the dangerous years of transition may affect the brain of even the steadiest and most normal of women.

You could treat others with consideration and give them shrewd and kind advice. But for Lili’s dangerous period you did not concern yourself. You allowed fate to shatter her beautiful existence. You never stretched out a hand to protect her. For Lili’s sake I cannot help hoping that there is a resurrection after death, a place “where nothing is dishonoured, where all is love.” To such a place Lili belongs. I have chosen a grave for her, looking south, where flowers will flourish, and have done it in my name.

To-morrow, I shall send you the necessary business details—a death certificate referring to heart disease—even if I have to write it myself.

I have opened the window. The river is as blue as it used to be at home in light nights. Here it is the moon that makes it blue. If only I had the power I would lay Lili in a boat and let her drift out to sea.

ELSIE LINDTNER.

LETTERS FROM LILI ROTHE TO THE MAN SHE LOVED

I have accumulated so many letters from you. To-day another has come—a letter from you to me!

Thus I know that you still think of me. And it does me good to know it. I go about thinking of you always and always, and it makes me happy. I want nothing different and nothing else but to be allowed to love you.

The letter ... in my hand, in my possession ... you, who understand what it is to love, will know how it is when one loves. Every trifling thing becomes a heaven and an earth.

The letter in my hand ... that means holding minutes of your time. Time is life. So I possess a bit of your life. For you the minutes have vanished, like raindrops sunk in the ground; for me they have imperishable qualities; they are like seeds that send up shoots and more shoots, to be nourished by the sun and moisture of my love.

And what was there in the letter? I am not ashamed to answer, only word after word, like footprint after footprint on a muddy path. The written sheets contain hardly more than the blank ones. But I did not expect that they would, how could I expect it?

For you I am simply one among many. No, perhaps a little more, a tiny bit more. You said the first time we were alone together ... not to me ... that my nature was congenial to you. That meant you liked to be in my neighbourhood—my poor little neighbourhood. I feel such pity for myself when we are together. It is like being two people, one of whom has to do and say the very opposite of what the other would like to say and do.... Only when I go away from you and your glance follows me like a living shadow, that doesn’t belong to me, I feel frightened and ashamed as a child. I am nervous about my walk, my figure, my movements, lest they should jar on you, and then I try to appear nonchalant. I talk and laugh, and am two people at once, one of whom watches the gaucheries of the other with sad eyes; the other who is quite at sea how she shall act to please you. And that is I myself, I, who in every one else’s society, feel as free as the pollen of the buttercups as it flies over the fields. I talk on and on as if I must fill space with my words, fearful that the embarrassment of silence will turn my features to stone, fearful, too, of discovering a glint of boredom in your glance. Your glance! It is like a dark, slowly flowing river that bears your soul towards me.

When you look at me, a new world is born within and around me. It is as on that day when the Lord said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” Your glance has divided me inwardly into light and darkness, which are a greater contrast than night and sun.

Your glance penetrates every drop of blood in my veins, as the sunshine soaks into the sleeping earth, and awakes to life its slumbering powers.

I know when your glance is resting on me like a tired hand on the arm of a chair. When you contemplate me without seeing me, because you are thinking of those cares which I divine, though I know nothing about them, something cries out within me, not from one place but from a thousand. Then warm founts of pity and grief overflow my inward being.

But don’t be afraid, my friend, that I shall speak of what I suspect. If you would rather no one should know, I will be silent—like a flower at evening I will close my eyes, compelled by the darkness in which you envelop yourself.

And I will go on seeming to understand nothing, nothing at all. But your mouth, beloved, your mouth, and your dear, beautiful hands betray you.

There is a quiver and trembling round the corners of your mouth as if the unspoken words lay there in ambush—and your hands look so helpless.

Your hands, whose grasp can be so majestically firm and strong, hang limply down, but you are not aware of it. At times your hands appear to me so full of “sin, sorrow, and peril,” that I feel as if my soul were responsible for yours.

I talk to you like this, beloved, because you will never know. There are other days when your glance, as you look at me, is like a blue flower that blossoms in the sacred garden of dreams, but only because you are happy in yourself, only because of that. You have had some pleasant experience, or built up some new hope.... I think, then, that you have derived strength from the glance that is life to you, as yours is my own life’s fountain.

At those times your glance flashes towards me, and a smile comes and goes on your lips. It comes from the foundation of your being, and is astonished at itself. At those times your figure is upright and elastic, and if you walk across a room you move with a rhythm that touches me like a song.

But, beloved ... you have yet another, a third look ... and this I recall when it grows dark. I fear it the most and love it the most. It’s when you realise I am a woman ... suddenly, as if a mask fell from my face, you realise that I am a woman, and not only a woman, but a woman meant for you. And the smile that then encloses me like a snare has not its origin in your consciousness and knowledge of my love, but its origin is in me because I am a woman. And then, of course, because in the kindness of your heart you are glad to give me the pleasure of remembering that I am a woman, your eyes fill with a misty twilight, and into this twilight I sink as into an everlasting night.

I feel your arm supporting my neck, your cheek’s melancholy pressure. Shuddering we stand leaning against each other, like two pines of the forest, that for a short space a hurricane of storm wind has flung together only to separate them again.

All the time your smile is cold and meditative, and your glance is extinguished like a lamp that has consumed its last drop of oil. My poor heart tells me the reason—you are wondering at yourself for giving way to a mood which means so little to you.

But when, saddened, I try to move away, you again offer me your mouth as a friendly almsgiving.... The letter, the barren letter I hold it to my heart. I leave my house and go into the deepest part of the wood till I find a place solitary enough to lie down in. The letter has filled me with a joy that resembles the pungent fragrance of the pine needles carpeting the ground.

I open my letter, contemplate the two unwritten sides, and read once more the written sheets.... I begin a deliberate juggle with the words; I transpose them over and over again, read each letter separately, as if there were some sweet secret hidden in each, and a caress in every stroke of the pen. I can’t help thinking there must be somewhere between the lines one single little word all for myself, that concerns me only.

Yet my joy goes down with the sun; the leaves cease to glow, and the darkness gathers in, and I sit with nothing but despondency in my lap.

Beloved, beloved! how kind you are!

I have lain awake all night with these words ringing in my head like a song through the darkness. How kind you are!

You gave me a whole evening. Don’t deny it, for you know I collect all the minutes that you can spare from your superfluity. I glean them together, as Ruth gleaned wheat on Boaz’s fertile acres. I hadn’t dared to hope; not dared, you must believe me. I left the house alone with thoughts about you, but without the slightest shadow of a hope of seeing you. Then when I asked you imploringly, “Come to the meeting,” you shook your head and answered, “I can’t manage it.”

But while I made my way through the lighted, busy streets, my heart became suddenly so heavy that I felt I couldn’t go on. Yet I dragged myself there.

Many people greeted me, and said they were glad to see me.... I stood in the centre of a little group. Then all at once I felt _your_ presence. I heard you coming ... your step ... it seemed as if you walked straight up to my very heart’s door.

Smiling, you held out your hand to me ... that alone was enough to gild my evening, but you stayed with me, stayed with _me_. We sat together, _we two_. The whole evening we sat together. While others discussed what they had come together to discuss, I sat apart and let myself be enthralled by a happiness which was almost more than I could bear.

Several times you leaned close to me to whisper something, and we both laughed and chatted about the others.

You are very fond of me as a friend with whom you can talk or be silent at your pleasure. If I were to cease to exist one day, you would—if only for a few minutes—feel the loss. Therefore I know that my life has not been lived in vain.

So, gradually, I have gained ground, step by step, and I don’t worry you. That is true, is it not? I don’t worry you? Rather than be a burden to you I would give up the joy that lies for me in seeing you now and then, and being sometimes where you are. It is that I long for nothing else, but to be allowed to love you.

Sometimes when my thoughts soar to the cloudy pinnacles of bliss I have asked myself, what if the impossible were to happen, if you were to love me!

The clouds float on high, but when they are heavy with the moisture of earth, they weep till they are light again, and their tears water into fruitfulness the woods and meadows, while they themselves sail on yonder through the chill ether.

The clouds aspire to reach the height of the stars as my thoughts aspire to your love. But they know perfectly well that they are striving after the unattainable.

And when my thoughts have tarried a while up there in the sky, they become weighed down with depression and float softly earthwards, where they properly belong, and my heart itself drops like an anchor into the deep, quiet waters of sorrow.

But why do I talk of sorrow, I who am the happiest of the happy?... I didn’t mean it, no, I didn’t mean it in the least.

But if the impossible were to happen, the impossible....

If it could happen that you would love me? If your glance told me so just once.

I know what I should do—yes, I know. I should shut my eyes on that glance, so as never to let it go from me. I should leave my home, and my children, and go away. I should take leave of life, and fall asleep quietly, oh, so quietly, never to awake.

The darkness of the grave would have to be round me, so that not a sound disturbed my happiness.

To live and know that you loved me! I could not do it. My strength would be lacking. I can only love.

Henry said one day, “Don’t touch any of my little bottles.” I was staring at them so hard. Each of the little bottles contained the peace of the grave. But I must go on living for the sake of my little children, for Henry’s sake. And why should I not go on living? I have no reason to wish to do otherwise. Yet I am not with them, though in their midst. When I move about in my rooms, when I talk to the children and Henry, I am not there. My eyes are seeking _him_, my ears strain after _him_....

From the first moment we met, my _beloved_, you and I—I became a stranger amongst my own people. But no one knows it, except myself. And I feel that if I was bound by a thousand ties, I should break them all, where you, my love, were concerned.

I am so very much of a dreamer that it is difficult for me to write distinctly just what the relations are between us. Other thoughts perpetually throng upon me, and I have to strive hard not to pervert things or fabricate. And you will understand that I have not a jot or tittle of desire to fabricate....

You must know how poor I am, in spite of my having home and family, and how rich, on the contrary, you make me, so that eternally I must love you. You must be told everything. You must be told how very well I know you don’t care whether you are told or not, but I write not for your sake, but for the sake of my own love.... You are so unspeakably good and kind....

There was another evening, the evening of the fête. I asked you to give me a moment, one little moment for me alone, and in the middle of the revel and music we sat down in a corner together, at a little table. One gets distinct in calculating when the means are so sparingly few.

I seated myself at an angle, from which I could, to my heart’s content, and eye’s satisfaction, gaze right into your soul without any one seeing what I was doing.

You, you looked at me as if you were glad at my joy. You talked of all sorts of things. But every word that you let fall with a confidential emphasis as if it were between you and me alone, was like pure gold—a treasure to be added to my heart.

Not for long were we allowed to sit together undisturbed. Other people came up to us and jokingly teased us. They said that we too obviously sought each other’s company. How stupid of them to say that, when it is only I who seek yours. And yet—don’t be vexed with me—I liked them to say it. So I do.

And then it was that we came to discuss goodness, and I said so that every one could hear, that you were the best and finest of all the men I knew. My own husband stood near and smiled. He was so sure of me.... You, as well as the others, declared that there were men who might compare favourably with you. I could not bear to hear that. Softly in an undertone, I begged you to confess that you were the best, and you whispered, using “thou” for the first time, “For _thee_ I am best.”

But it is not true that you are only best for me. You are wonderfully good—your whole manner of life bears witness to it. Every one knows it, and every one knows that you suffer. No one can protect you from its being common knowledge that you have suffered deeply. Your heart lies in ruins. I ought to learn from you to forget myself, and never to speak of love which to you can never mean anything again. But I don’t speak in words.

It was that evening you clasped me close to you, not because you loved me, but because you were so kind. While your lips sought mine I asked, “Then it is true that you love me a little?” and you answered in your infinite goodness, “Yes, it is true, you are very, very dear to me.”

But suppose I had then said, “Do you love me?” and you in your infinite goodness had replied, “Yes, I love you.” What then? What then?

I dread the moment when I shall put this question to you. It lies in the womb of the future, waiting to reveal itself. May I have the power granted me never to speak, but if I do speak, may I understand absolutely that your answer is prompted by infinite goodness alone. Yet between us there is something that is all yours and mine. Something greater than love, for love aims at a goal, and sooner or later comes to a standstill. But that which exists between you and me revolves on and on like a silent star in its own distant sphere. Nobody and nothing can check its progress.

... I am not exigent. Your love will, I know, never be my possession. I don’t expect it, and don’t wish it. It is my greatest happiness that I have met you too late to be one of the many who have passed out of your heart into the cold, and everlasting yearning.

* * * * *

To-day is my birthday, and each one is emulating the other to give me pleasure. The rooms are crammed with flowers and presents. Yet I am not joyous, and the whole affair seems very childish. How should you be able to remember that to-day is my birthday? _You_ who know such heaps of people!

You will come to-night! I did not tell you intentionally that it was my birthday.... Perhaps because I hoped that you yourself would recollect the date. Last year I met you in the street on my birthday, and you told me that it was the anniversary of your father’s death, and then I said that it was my birthday. You asked if you might send me some flowers, and I said no. How could I have explained it, receiving flowers from _you_ who had never been in our house. And now, this evening you are coming!!

At first you did not wish to come, and it was sweet of you not to wish it. But as you don’t—don’t love me there is no reason why you should mind meeting my husband.

You are coming this evening. You are coming! Every time the bell rings my heart begins to beat faster, and every time I am disappointed. It is like standing in a brilliantly lighted room that becomes suddenly dark.

Once I received flowers from you which I never thanked you for. You know nothing about these flowers. Shall I tell you their story? But you mustn’t laugh.

I always feel happy when I think of them. It is almost as if the flowers were standing again in the window, and I lying in my hypnotic sleep, unable to open my eyes but knowing all the time that your yellow orchids, trembling like a swarm of golden butterflies on their delicate stalks were standing there in the window. I don’t suppose you gave a thought to whether they would reach me before or after the operation. Perhaps you merely rang up a florist on the telephone and ordered something specially beautiful to be sent to the Nursing Home on one or other of the days. And I am modest with good reason about questioning you.

I was in bed. No one was with me. The doctor had just been here and—as he considered his duty—explained for me, what my dear Henry had been so carefully keeping from me, that it was a matter of life and death. He had very little hope. But I was not afraid. I lay there and thought of you, of Henry and the children, and then again of you. I thought of how I had told you that I had to undergo that severe operation. I was bound to tell you—then, in case I died, I had to say good-bye to you.

You tried to turn it off with a joke, but in a few minutes you grew grave. You asked if I was nervous, and I begged you, if matters did not go well, to visit my grave, just once. Only once. It was very childish of me, but you did not laugh. You merely said, “To satisfy you I will promise, but I know you will live to visit my grave....”

I have the power when I like, of bringing you before me in the flesh, so very much in the flesh, that I at times can hardly bear other people to be in the room. I want to be alone with you. After I came out of the operating theatre, I was alone with you every evening and every night.

I talked to you, I talked ... and you were silent. I never was able to put many words into your mouth. But your attentive eyes rested on me ... and you were there.

When the doctor had gone, I lay by myself for a long time. The nurse supposed naturally that I needed rest after my conversation with the doctor. I thought of you. I was so curiously restless, a sort of joyous, expectant restlessness. I kept looking at the door, as if every minute I should see you coming in.

I didn’t really expect you. I knew, of course, that it was impossible, for many reasons. It would not occur to you to call on me. You might easily imagine that visits so shortly before the operation would not be permitted. There had been flowers in my room, sent by my friends, and many of Henry’s patients.

But they had been taken away, because I must not be excited by their scent. I lay there and gazed at the door; my heart began to beat violently—no, not exactly to beat, but it felt as if something was entering it. You must not think, beloved, that I imagined all this afterwards. I felt—I could feel distinctly that some great joy was on its way to me. I heard the footsteps approaching in my heart, and then I heard them outside on the stairs. Nurses and visitors were coming and going all day on the stairs, but, nevertheless, I sat up in bed pressing my hand on my heart, for I knew, I knew, that this concerned you.

My nurse came in with a parcel. It seemed as if she, too, understood that this was something which I ought to see at once. She came quite close up to me with the box and, smiling, opened it deliberately, so deliberately that it looked as if she were teasing me.... “Let me open it,” I begged, but no, she insisted on doing it herself.

I felt how the blood deserted my face.... “Give them to me!” I implored as if I were praying for my life. She handed me the long spray from which the flowers hung like gold sunbeams, and fluttered over the whiteness of the sheet. I held the spray in my hand.

When she was gone, I kissed every one of the sensitive flowers. And you were with me. All your steadfast calm was infused into my blood. Now I could die happy. The flowers were put in water and placed in the window. They were to stay there all night, I said, and no one objected. I had a light burning the whole night through, as if I were afraid of the dark. I dozed and woke, and dozed and woke. The flowers did not sleep, and they did not fly away.

You, you were with me!

Even if you never thought of me at all that night you were still with me. And, maybe, you dreamed of me. Men often dream of things that they haven’t been thinking about. And you forgot your dream before you awoke.

The next morning when they came to fetch me, I besought so earnestly that my orchids might stand beside the bed. I submitted calmly to the anæsthetic. While the mask was being drawn over my face I thought of you, and it seemed as if the yellow, dewy petals began to dance over me.

Deeply I breathed in the fragrance, and I felt as if the flowers filled the room. They had increased from a swarm to countless swarms, and become a singing ocean of gold. And in the ocean I saw _your eyes_. You were with me, even if in thought you did not accompany me, yet you were there.

I woke up and my gaze met yours. My eyes were too tired to see much. Yet I saw the yellow flowers swaying on their stalks. They had come back. They had, with their loving souls, borne me company at the time, and now they had come back. Close to my eyes they seemed to be perpetually singing and making music. Yes, you were with me.

When the pain was most acute it was just as if they flew away, and dispersed at the sound of my groans. I quite understood it. They were like you. You, too, hate the thought of sickness. You, too, cannot bear people to be ill. So I tried to smile at them, and to act as if I did not feel the pain.

... Your flowers ... your exquisite, blessed flowers....

To-day is my birthday, and you are coming, yet I am not happy.

All my best friends are coming. I shall sit at the same table as you! You will sit on my right hand, for you are the only one who comes for the first time. It is not wrong, it cannot be wrong. But if it is wrong, then punish me, let me suffer for it; I am ready.

I said that I must rest before the guests arrive. I must be alone for a little to collect myself for the joy that is greater than joy.

For my joy is more than bliss. There is nothing so great, there cannot be anything greater than my joy.

The flowers are risen from the dead. The yellow butterfly blossoms.

* * * * *

I almost wish it was over. I don’t know myself what it is, but I wish it was over.

_That_, I wish over, and I don’t know what it is. I see something beyond the barrier, and I don’t see it. It is not death, but there is something that hurts more than death.

And the evening was the happiest of my life.

Perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is only my heart breaking for happiness, but can it hurt so much when one’s heart breaks for happiness?

It was at the moment when you went out at the door. Magna Wellmann turned her head and said, “That was _the_ evening of the year,” and you nodded. Then was it. It felt as if all my joy had suddenly been hemmed up in a coffin and couldn’t breathe. Henry asked, “Are you ill, you look so strange, and you have been beaming the whole evening as if you had light inside you....” That was true. I had light, yes, light burning within me, and now it is extinguished.

I must gather myself together. I must cherish and hoard my happy evening. It is wrong to think such things, but I am glad that Henry had to read the treatise this evening. I mean....

* * * * *

You led me to the table. You sat on my right, and you were so calm. You are always so calm. Why should you not be calm, you are not in love.

You invited me to drink, and I who never drink wine, drank with you, only a sip. It was ... no, I cannot speak of it. But now I understand that clergymen really believe it when they say, “This is the body and blood of Christ.”

No one could read my thoughts.

Now I know what it is that I have lacked hitherto, and I am glad that I have lacked it.