what we ourselves have recognized it to be, not alone what we
believe to be the main purpose of our existences. When you,
without being yourself conscious of it, gave me a purer, higher
tendency, you were fulfilling a part of your destiny, dear
Magnhild. It was perhaps a small part; but perhaps it was also
only an hundredth part of still more which you had done for many
others without so much as suspecting it yourself.

Magnhild, I can say it now without danger of being
misinterpreted, and also without doing harm; for you have become
four years and a half older and I am going hence; indeed, I
believe it will help you to hear it. Well, then, the innocence
in your soul had become, amidst your peculiar circumstances, a
moral atmosphere which in you, more than in any one I ever met,
proclaimed itself to be a power. It was all the more beautiful
because so unconscious in its manifestations. It was breathed
from every manifestation of your bashfulness. It revealed itself
to me not alone in your blushes, Magnhild; no, in the tone of
your voice also, in the immediate relations you held with every
one you had intercourse with, or looked upon, or merely greeted.
If there were those in your presence who were not pure, you made
them appear abhorrent; you taught even the fallen ones what
beauty there is in moral purity.

You have the fullest right to rejoice over what I say. Aye, may
it bring you more than rejoicing! It is not well to brood over
a lost vocation, Magnhild, and the letters I receive from Grong
lead me to suppose that this is what you are now doing. One who
does not attain the first or greatest object of his ambition
ought not to sink into listless inactivity; for do we not thus
check the development of the thousand-leaved destiny of the tree
of life? May not even disappointment be part of this?

* * * * *

(Five days later.)

Magnhild, I do not say this in self-justification. Every time I
think of your singing I realize what I have repressed. It
possessed a purity, untouched by passion, and that was why it
moved with such exalting influence through my soul. The perfume
of tender memories was in it, memories of my childhood, my
mother, my good teacher, my first conceptions of music, my first
yearning for love, or thirst for beauty.