Yet there are people who think autumn a beautiful time of year!

* * * * *

My will is paralysed from self-disgust.  I find myself involuntarily listening and watching for the postman, who brings nothing for me.  There are moments when my fingers seem to be feeling the smoothness of the cream-laid “At Home” cards which used to be showered upon us, especially at this season.  Towards evening I grow restless.  Formerly my day was a crescendo of activity until the social hours were reached.  Now the hours fall one by one in ashes before my eyes.

I am myself, yet not myself.  There are moments when I envy every living creature that has the right to pair—­either from hate or from habit.  I am alone and shut out.  What consolation is it to be able to say:  “It was my own choice!”

* * * * *

A letter from Malthe.

No, I will not open it.  I do not wish to know what he writes....  It is a long letter.

* * * * *

My nerves are quiet.  But I often lie awake, and my sleep is broken.  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.