“And you can part from me like this, quite calmly? I am engaged, and then we are done, and everything that has been between us two is just a stupid old story which mustn’t be brought to mind any more. Past is past, and that is all—Niels, all the precious days—will the memory of them be silent from now on? Will you never, never think of me, never miss me? Won’t you call the dream forth again, on many a quiet evening, and give it the colors it might have glowed with? Can you keep from loving it all back to life again in your thoughts and ripening it to the fullness it might have had? Can you? Can you put your foot on it and crush it all out of existence, every bit of it? Niels!”
“I hope so; you have shown me that it can be done.—But this is nonsense, pure, unmitigated nonsense from beginning to end. Why did you arrange this comedy? I have no shadow of a right to reproach you. You have never loved me, never said that you loved me. You have given me leave to love you, that is all, and now you withdraw your permission. Or perhaps you will allow me to go on, though you have given yourself to another? I don’t understand you, if you can imagine that to be possible. We are not children. Or are you afraid I shall forget you too soon? Never fear. You are not one to be blotted easily out of a man’s life. But take care! A love like mine does not come to a woman twice in her life; take care that you do not bring misfortune upon yourself by casting me off! I don’t wish you any harm, no, no! May you never know want and sickness, and may you have all the happiness that comes with wealth, admiration, and social success, in measure full and overflowing, that is my wish for you. May all the world stand open to you, all but one little door, one single little door, however much you knock and try to open it—but otherwise everything as fully and widely as it is possible to wish it.”
He spoke slowly, almost sadly, not bitterly, but with a strangely tremulous note in his voice, a note that was new to her and moved her. She had grown a little pale and stood leaning stiffly against the chair. “Niels,” she said, “don’t predict misfortune! Remember you were not here, Niels, and my love—I did not know how real it was; it seemed more like something that just interested me. It breathed through my life like a delicate spiritual poem, it never caught me in strong arms; it had wings—only wings. At least I thought so. I did not know better until now, or until the moment I had done it—said Yes and all that. Everything was so difficult, there were so many things all at once and so many people to consider. … It began with my brother, Hardenskjold, the one who was in the West Indies, you know. He had been rather wild when he was here, but over there he settled down and became so sensible and went into partnership with someone and made a lot of money, and married a rich widow, a sweet little thing, I assure you, and he and father made up, for Hardie was so changed, oh, he is so respectable there is no end to it, and so susceptible to what people say—terribly bourgeoise, oh! Of course, he thought I ought to be taken up in the bosom of the family again, and every time he came here he lectured me and pleaded and palavered, and you see father is an old man now, and so at last I did it, and everything was just as in the old days.”
She paused for a moment and began to take off first her mantilla and then her hat and gloves, and, busy with all this, she turned a little away from Niels, while she went on talking.
“And then Hardie had a friend who is very highly respected—oh, extremely so, and they all thought I ought to do it and wished it so much, and then you see I could take my position in society just as before, or really better than before, because he is so very highly respected in every way, and after all that is what I have been wishing for a long time. I suppose you can’t understand that? You would never have thought it of me? Quite the contrary. Because I was always making fun of conventional society with its banalities and its stereotyped morality, its thermometer of virtue and its compass of womanliness—you remember how witty we were! It is to weep, Niels, for it wasn’t true, at least not all the time. I will tell you something: we women can break away for a while, when something in our lives has opened our eyes to the love of freedom that after all is in us, but we can’t keep it up. It is in our blood, this passion for the quintessence of propriety and the pinnacle of gentility up to its most punctilious point. We can’t bear to be at war with the established order that is accepted by all commonplace people. In our inmost selves we really think these people are right, because they are the ones that sit in judgment, and in our hearts we bow to their judgments and suffer from them, no matter how brave a face we wear. It is not natural for us women to be exceptional, not really, Niels, it makes us so queer, more interesting, perhaps, but still—Can you understand it? It is silly, don’t you think so? But at least you can comprehend that it made
