It also revived the
first, pure tintings of life, those which had not yet become
glaring, still less tainted.

I think of your singing artistically schooled, radiant with
spirituality--what a revelation! And this I checked in its
growth.

I bought while we were together some of the brooches made by
your father. I showed them to no one. Under the circumstances
it would have caused suspicion and consequent annoyance. But in
those brooches I felt the family calling, Magnhild, the family
work, which your talent should have further continued. In your
father's work there is innocent fancy, patience, in its
imperfections, as it were, a sigh of far more significant,
undeveloped power.

Is all this now checked because your progress is checked, you
who are the last of your family and without children? No, I
cannot justify myself.

* * * * *

(I have been again compelled to lay aside my pen for many days.
Now I must try if I can finish.)

Let not the wrong I did to you, and thereby, alas, to many both
in the present and in the future, be used by you as an excuse
for never making further progress! You can, if you will, give
free scope to whatever power there is within you, if not in one
way, in another. And do this now; do it, also, because I implore
you! You can make the burden of my fault less heavy for my
thoughts, now in the last hours of my life.

Aye, while I write this it grows lighter. The kindness you, in
spite of all, surely cherish toward me (I feel it!) sends me a
greeting.

You will, so far as you can, rescue my life's work, where it
failed to complete its efforts; you will build upon and improve,
Magnhild!

You will, moreover, accept this request as a consolation?

* * * * *

(I could proceed no farther. But to-day I am better.)

If what I have written helps to open the world once more to you,
so that you can enter in and take hold of life's duties; aye, if
all that you have either neglected or only half performed can
come to attain the rank of links in life's problem, and thus
become dear to you,--then it will do me good; remember this!
Farewell!

Ah, yes, farewell! I have other letters to write, and cannot do
much. Farewell! HANS TANDE.

* *