“Woman’s purity! What do you mean by woman’s purity?”
“I mean—that is—”
“You mean—I will tell you; you mean nothing, for that is another piece of nonsensical delicacy. A woman can’t be pure, and isn’t supposed to be—how could she? It is against nature! And do you think God made her to be pure? Answer me!—No, and ten thousand times no. Then why this lunacy! Why fling us up to the stars with one hand, when you have to pull us down with the other! Can’t you let us walk the earth by your side, one human being with another, and nothing more at all? It is impossible for us to step firmly on the prose of life when you blind us with your poetic will-o’-the-wisps. Let us alone! For God’s sake, let us alone!”
She sat down and wept.
Niels understood much. Fennimore would have been miserable had she known how much. Was it not partly the old story of love’s holiday fare which refuses to turn into daily bread, but goes on being holiday fare, only more tasteless, more insipid, and less nourishing, day by day? One can’t perform a miracle, and the other can’t perform it, and there they sit in their banqueting clothes, careful to smile and to use festive words, but underneath they feel the agony of hunger and thirst, while their eyes shrink from each other, and hatred begins to grow in their hearts. Was not that the first chapter, and was not the other the equally dreary tale of a woman’s despair at not being able to recover herself after finding out that the demigod, whose bride she became so joyously, was only an ordinary mortal? First the despair, the bootless despair, and then the merciful stupor—that must be the explanation. It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her, the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones which she longs to feel in all their hardness. In her first despair she is not satisfied to tread the path with her feet: she is determined to crawl it on her knees, choosing the way that is steepest and roughest. She desires no helping hand and will not lift her head—let it sink down with its own heaviness, so that she may put her face to the ground and taste the dust with her tongue!
Niels pitied her with all his heart, but he left her alone as she desired.
It was hard to look on and not help, to sit apart and dream her happy, in stupid dreams, or to wait and calculate, with the cold knowledge of the physician, how long she had to suffer. He told himself, in this dreary wisdom, that there could be no relief until her old hope in the fair, gleaming treasures of life had bled to death and a more sluggish stream had entered her veins, making her dull enough to forget, blunt enough to accept, and, at last, at last, coarse enough to rejoice in the thick atmosphere of a bliss many heavens lower than that which she had meekly hoped and humbly prayed for wings to reach.—He was full of disgust with all the world when he thought that she, to whom he had once knelt in adoration, had come to such a pass that she had been forced to a slave’s estate, and stood at the gate shivering with cold, while he rode past on his high horse with the large coins of life jingling in his pocket.
One Sunday afternoon, in the latter part of August, Niels rowed across the fjord. Fennimore was at home alone when he came; he found her lying on a sofa in the corner room, and very miserable. Her breath came with that low, monotonous moaning which seems to afford relief from pain, and she said that she had a frightful headache. There was no one to help her, for she had given the maid leave to go home to Hadsund, and soon afterward someone had come and carried off Erik; she could not understand where they had gone in the rain. Now she had been lying there for two hours trying to sleep, but it was impossible, the pain was so bad. She had never had it before, and it had come on so suddenly—at dinnertime there had been nothing the matter. First it was in the temples, and then it seemed to dig deeper and deeper and deeper in; now it seemed to be behind her eyes—if it only was not anything dangerous. She was not used to being ill, and was very frightened and unhappy.
Niels comforted her as well as he could, telling her to lie still, close her eyes, and not speak. He found a heavy shawl, which he wrapped around her feet, fetched vinegar from the buffet, and made a cold compress, which he laid on her brow. Then he sat down quietly by the window, and looked out at the rain.
From time to time, he stole over to her on tiptoe and changed the compress without speaking, merely nodding to her, as she looked up at him gratefully between his hands. Sometimes she wanted to speak, but he hushed her with a look, shaking his head, and returned to his seat again.
At last she fell asleep.
One hour passed and another, and she was still sleeping. Slowly one quarter slipped into the other, while the melancholy daylight faded, and the shadows in the room waxed larger, as if they were growing out of the furniture and the walls. Outside the rain fell, evenly and steadily, blotting out every
