Whither could he flee to escape these attempts that always ended in the ditch? All his life had been nothing else, and it would never be anything else in the future; he knew that and felt it with such certainty that he sickened at the thought of all this futile endeavor, and he wished with all his soul that he could run away and escape this meaningless fate. If only the ice would break under him now as he skated, and all would be over with a gasp and a spasm in the cold water!
He stopped, exhausted, and looked back. The moon had gone down, and the fjord stretched long and dark between the white hills on either side. Then he turned and worked his way back against the wind. It was very strong now, and he was tired. He skated closer to the shore to get the shelter of the hills, but, as he struggled thus, he came on a hole in the ice made by the winds sweeping down from the hills, and he felt the thin, elastic crust give way under him with a crackling sound.
Ah, he breathed more easily, in spite of all, when he set foot on the firm ice again! Under the stimulus of fear, his exhaustion had almost left him, and he skated on vigorously.
While he was struggling out there, Fennimore sat in the lighted room, baffled and miserable. She felt herself cheated out of her revenge. She hardly knew what she had expected, but it was something entirely different; she had had a vision of something mighty and majestic, something of swords and red flames, or—not that, but something that would sweep her along and lift her to a throne, but instead it had all turned out so small and paltry, and she had felt more like a common scold than like one who utters curses. …
After all, she had learned something from Niels.
Early in the morning of the following day, while Niels, overcome with exhaustion, was still asleep, she left the house.
XII
For the better part of two years Niels Lyhne had roamed about on the Continent.
He was very lonely, without kith or kin or any close friend of his heart. Yet there was another and greater loneliness that encompassed him; for however desolate and forsaken a man may feel when he has no single spot on all this vast earth to which his affections can cling, which he can bless when the heart will overflow and yearn for when longing will spread its wings, there is no existence so lonely that he is utterly alone if he can only see the fixed bright star of a life goal shining overhead. But Niels Lyhne had no star. He did not know what to do with himself and his gifts. It was all very well to have talent if he could only have used it, but he went about like a painter without hands. How he envied the people, great and small, who always, whenever they reached out into life, found a handle to lay hold of; for he could never find any handle. It seemed as though he could do nothing but sing over again the old romantic songs, and in truth he had so far done nothing else. His talent was like something apart in him, a quiet Pompeii, or a harp that had to be taken out of its corner. It was not all-pervading, did not run down the street with him or tingle in his fingertips—not in the least. His talent had no grip on him. Sometimes it seemed to him that he had been born half a century too late, sometimes that he had come altogether too early. His talent was rooted in something of the past; it could not draw nourishment from his opinions, his convictions, and his sympathies, could not absorb them and give them form. The two elements seemed always to be gliding apart like water and oil, which can be shaken together, but can never mix, never become one.
Gradually, as he began to realize this, he sank into a boundless dejection and grew inclined to take an ironic, suspicious view of himself and his whole past. There must be something wrong with him, he told himself, something incurably wrong in the very marrow of his being; for surely a man could fuse the varying elements in his own nature—that he firmly believed.
This was the state of his mind when he settled down, in the month of September, toward the end of the second year of his exile, on the shores of Lake Garda, in the little town of Riva.
Not long afterward, the region was hedged about by difficulties that put a stop to travelling and kept all strangers away. Cholera had broken out round about Venice and down south in Descensano and in the north by the Trentino. Under these circumstances, Riva was not lively, for the hotels had been emptied at the first rumor, and tourists bound for Italy took another route.
Naturally, the few people who remained drew all the more closely together.
The most remarkable person among them was a famous opera singer, whose real name was Madame Odéro. Her stage name was far more celebrated. She and her companion, Niels, and a deaf doctor from Vienna were the only guests at the Golden Sun, the leading hotel in town.
Niels felt very much attracted to her, and she yielded to that warmth of manner in him which is often a characteristic of people who are at strife with themselves and therefore feel the need of establishing their relations with others on a safe basis.
Madame Odéro had lived there for nearly seven months, trying to recover, by complete rest, from the after-effects of a throat trouble that had threatened her voice. Her physician had told her to abstain for a year from
