So I let happiness go by.

* * * * *

Two years ago Von Brincken died, leaving me a considerable share of his fortune—–­ and a letter, written on the night of the day when we last met.

I might then have left Richard.  Your constancy would have been a sufficient guarantee for my future.

A mere accident destroyed my illusions.  A friend of my own age had recently married an officer much younger than herself.  At the end of a year’s happiness he left her; and society, far from pitying her, laughed at her plight.

This drove me to make my supreme resolve—­to abandon, and flee from, the one love of my life.

Joergen, I owe you the best hours I have known:  those hours in which you showed me the plans for the “White Villa.”

I feel a bitter, yet unspeakable joy when I think that you yourself built the walls within which I am living in solitary confinement.

Once I longed for you with a consuming ardour.

Now, alas, I am but a pile of burnt-out ashes.  The winds of heaven have dispersed my dreams.

I go on living because it is not in my nature to do away with myself.  I live, and shall continue to live.

If only you knew what goes on within me, and how low I have sunk that I can write this confession!

There are thoughts that a woman can never reveal to the man she loves—­even if her own life and his were at stake....

It is night.  The stars are bright overhead.  Joergen Malthe, why have I written all this to you?...  What do I really want of you?...

* * * * *

No, no!... never in this world....

You shall never read this letter.  Never, never!  What need you know more than that I love you?  I love you!  I love you!

I will write to you again, calmly, humbly, and tell you the simple truth:  I was afraid of the future, and of the time when you would cease to love me.  That is what I fled from.

I still fear the future, and the time when you will love me no more.  But all my powers of resistance are shattered by this one truth:  I love.  For the first and only time in my life.  Therefore I implore you to come to me; but now, at once.  Do not wait a week or a month.  My lime trees are fragrant with blossom.  I want you, Joergen, now, while the limes are flowering.  Then, what you ask of me shall be done.

If you want me for a wife, I will follow you as the women of old followed their lords and masters, in joyful submission.  But if you only care to have me for a time, I will prepare the house for my desired guest.

Whatever you decide to do will be such an immense joy that I tremble lest anything should happen to hinder its fulfilment....

Then let the years go by!  Then let age come to me!

I shall have sown so many memories of you and happiness that I shall have henceforth a forest of glad thoughts, wherein to wander and take my rest till Death comes to claim me.