nt
dare.... You are mad. Where he enters, we go out. There isn't any power
on earth that can force me into the slightest intimacy with that
person. Mother must choose--he or we! If they go to Denmark after their
marriage, then we are exiles; if they stay here, we leave."

"And those are your intentions, Tage?" asked Mrs. Fonss.

"I don't think you need doubt that; imagine the life. Ida and I are
sitting out there on the terrace on a moonlit evening, and behind the
laurel-bushes some one is whispering. Ida asks who is whispering, and
I reply that it is my mother and her new husband.--No, no, I shouldn't
have said that; but you see the effect of it already, the pain it causes
me, and you may be sure that it won't help Elinor's health either."

Mrs. Fonss let the children go while she remained sitting here.

No, Tage was right, it had not been good for them. How far from her they
had already gone in that short hour! How they looked at her, not like
her children, but like their father's! How quick they were to desert her
as soon as they saw that not every motion of her heart was theirs! But
she was not only Tage's and Elinor's mother alone; she was also a human
being on her own account, with a life of her own and hopes of her own,
quite apart from them. But she was, perhaps, not quite as young as she
had believed herself to be. This had come to her in the conversation
with her children. Had she not sat there, timid, in spite of her words;
had she not almost felt like one who was trespassing upon the rights of
youth? Were not all the exorbitant demands of youth and all its naive
tyranny in everything they had said?--It is for us to love, life belongs
to us, and your life it is but to exist for us.

She began to understand that there might be a satisfaction in being
quite old; not that she wished it, but yet old age smiled faintly at
her like a far-distant peace, coming after all the agitation of recent
times, and now when the prospect of so much discord was so near. For she
did not believe that her children would ever change their mind, and yet
she had to discuss it with them over and over again before she gave up
hope. The best thing would be for Thorbrogger to leave immediately. With
his presence no longer here the children might be less irritable, and
she could try to show them how eager she was to be as considerate as
possible to them. In time the first bitterness would disappear, and
everything... no, she did not be