Adultery -- Fiction; Artists -- Fiction; Illegitimate children -- Fiction; Painters -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
She had written to Heggen about her great joy, and he had replied saying
he would have loved to come and have a look at the boy, but the journey
was long and expensive and he was on the point of starting for Italy.
He sent his best wishes to her and the little prince, hoping to welcome
them both in Italy soon. At the time of the child’s death Heggen was in
Dresden and sent her a long and sympathetic letter.
As soon as she was well enough to write she sent a few lines to Gert,
giving him her address, but asking him not to come and see them until the
spring, when baby would be big and pretty. Only his mother could see now
that he was lovely. She wrote him a longer letter when she was up and
about again.
On the day the child was buried she wrote telling Gram in a few words of
her loss, informing him of her intention to go south the same evening,
and asking him not to expect to hear from her until she was more like
herself again. “Do not worry about me,” she wrote. “I am fairly composed
now, but hopelessly miserable, of course.”
Her letter crossed one from Gert, who wrote:
“MY DEAREST JENNY,—Thank you for your last letter. I see that
you reproach yourself because of your relations to me; my dear
little girl, I have nothing to reproach you for, so you must
not do it yourself. You have never been anything but kind and
sweet and loving to your friend, and I shall never forget
your tenderness and affection during the short time you loved
me—your charming youth, your gentle devotion in the days of our
short happiness.
“We ought to have known, both of us, that it would be
short. I certainly ought to have understood, and if you had
reflected you might have known too, but do two people, who
are attracted by one another, ever reflect? Do you think I
reproach you because one day you ceased to love me and caused
me the greatest suffering in my far from happy life—a twofold
suffering when I learnt simultaneously that our relations would
have consequences which you would have to bear all through life?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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