“I had had hopes of a great artistic work—my folklore illustrations—but I had to give up my dreams for the reality of making bread and butter. Once I had to come to an agreement with my creditors. She took her share of the struggle and poverty loyally and without complaint—she would willingly have starved for me and the children. Feeling as I did towards her, it was hard to accept what she gave in working, suffering, and renouncing for my sake. “I had to sacrifice everything I loved; she forced me to give it up inch by inch. From the very first she and my father were mortal enemies. He could not bear his daughter-in-law, and that was a blow to her vanity, so she set about to make trouble between him and me. My father was an official of the old school—a bit narrow and stiff maybe, but right-minded and loyal, noble and good at heart. You would have liked him, I am sure. We had been so much to one another, but our intimacy was put a stop to. “As for my painting, I understood that I had not the talent I once had imagined, and I lacked energy to make continued efforts when I did not believe in myself—dead tired as I was of the struggle and of my life at her side, which became more and more of a caricature. She reproached me, but secretly she triumphed. “She was jealous of the children too, if I was fond of them or they were fond of me. She would not share them with me nor me with them. “Her jealousy has grown into a kind of madness as the years have gone by. You have seen it for yourself. She can scarcely bear to see me in the same room with you even when Helge is there.” Jenny went to him and laid her hands on his shoulders: “I cannot understand,” she said—“I really cannot—that you have been able to stand such a life.” Gert Gram bent forward, resting his head on her shoulder: “I don’t understand it myself.” When he raised his head and their eyes met, she put her hand to his neck and, overwhelmed by a tender compassion, kissed him on the cheek and forehead. She felt a sudden fear when she looked down at his face resting on her shoulder, with eyes closed, but the next moment he lifted his head and rose, saying: “Thank you, Jenny dear.” Gram put the drawings back in their cover and straightened the table. “I hope you will be very, very happy. You are so bright and courageous, so energetic and gifted. Dear child, you are everything I wanted to be, but never was.” He spoke in a low, absent-minded voice. “I think,” he said a moment later, “that when relations between two people are new, before their life is perfectly accorded, there are many small difficulties to overcome. I wish you could live elsewhere, not in this town. You should be alone, far from your own people—at first at least.” “Helge has applied for a post in Bergen, as you know,” said Jenny, and the feeling of despair and anguish again seized her when she thought of him. “Do you never speak to your mother about it? Why don’t you? Are you not fond of your mother?”