The
stars are shining over my head, and I never before experienced such a
sense of repose and calm. Is this the effect of the stars, or the
letter?

I am forty-two! It cannot be helped. I cannot buy back a single day of
my life. Forty-two! But during the night the thought does not trouble
me. The stars above reckon by ages, not by years, and sometimes I smile
to think that as soon as Richard returns home, the rooms in our house in
the Old Market will be lit up, and the usual set will assemble there
without me.

The one thing I should like to know is whether Malthe is still in
Denmark.

I would like to know where my thoughts should seek him--at home or
abroad.

I played with him treacherously when I called him "the youth," and
treated him as a mere boy. If we compare our ages it is true enough,
but not if we compare feelings.

Can there be anything meaner than for a woman to make fun of what is
really sacred to her? My feelings for Malthe were and still are sacred.
I myself have befouled them with my mockery.

But when I am lying in my bed beneath the vast canopy of the sky, all my
sins seem forgiven me. Fate alone--Fate who bears all things on his
shoulders--is to blame, and I wish nothing undone.

The letter will never be read. Never voluntarily by me.

* * * * *

I do not know the day of the week. That is one step nearer the goal for
which I long. May it come to pass that the weeks and months shall glide
imperceptibly over me, so that I shall only recognise the seasons by the
changing tints of the forest and the alternations of heat and cold.

Alas, those days are still a long way off!

I have just been having a conflict with myself, and I find that all the
time I have been living here as though I were spending a summer holiday
in Tyrol. I have been simply deceiving myself and playing with the
hidden thought that I could begin my life over again.

I have shivered with terror at this self-deception. The last few nights
I have hardly slept at all. A traveller must feel the same who sails
across the sea ignorant of the country to which he journeys. Vaguely he
pictures it as resembling his native land, and lands to find himself in
a wilderness which he must plant and cultivate until it blossoms with
his new desires and dreams. By the time he has turned the desert into a
home, his day is over....

* * * * *

If I could but make up my mind to b