If it weren’t for its being my day with you I don’t know what I’d do with Sundays.  I would hate them.  I’m not allowed to play on Sundays, because practising is forbidden on that day, and, as Frau Berg said, how is she to know if I am practising or playing?  Besides, it would disturb the others, which of course is true, for they all rest on Sundays, getting up late, sleeping after dinner, and not going out till they have had coffee about five.  Today, when I hoped they had all gone out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful thing of Ravel’s that Kloster showed me the other day,—­the most haunting, exquisite thing; and I hummed the weird harmonies as I went along, because they are what is so particularly wonderful about it.  Well, it really was a whisper, and I had to bend my head right over the violin to hear it at all whenever a tram passed, yet in five minutes Frau Berg appeared, unbuttoned and heated from her Mittagsruhe, and requested me to have some consideration for others as well as for the day.

I was very much ashamed of myself, besides feeling as though I were fifteen and caught at school doing something wicked.  I didn’t mind not having consideration for the day, because I think Ravel being played on it can’t do Sunday anything but good, but I did mind having disturbed the other people in the flat.  I could only say I was sorry, and wouldn’t do it again,—­just like an apologetic schoolgirl.  But what do you think I wanted to do, little mother?  Run to Frau Berg, and put my arms round her neck, and tell her I was lonely and wanting you, and would she mind just pretending she was fond of me for a moment?  She did look so comfortable and fat and kind, standing there filling up the doorway, and she wasn’t near enough for me to see her eyes, and it is her eyes that make one not want to run to her.

But of course I didn’t run.  I knew too well that she wouldn’t understand.  And indeed I don’t know why I should have felt such a longing to run into somebody’s arms.  Perhaps it was because writing to you brings you so near to me that I realize how far away you are.  During the week I work, and while I work I forget; and there’s the excitement of my lessons, and the joy of hearing Kloster appreciate and encourage.  But on Sundays the day is all you, and then I feel what months can mean when they have to be lived through each in turn and day by day before one gets back to the person one loves.  Why are you so dear, my darling mother?  If you were an ordinary mother I’d be so much more placid.  I wouldn’t mind not being with an ordinary mother.  When I look at other people’s mothers I think I’d rather like not being with them.  But having known what it is to live in love and understanding with you, it wants a great deal of persistent courage, the sort that goes on steadily with no intervals, to make one able to do without it.