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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 s.e.x? 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 quant.i.ty 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?

G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 s.e.xes, 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 ...