Magnhild, I can say it now without danger of being misinterpreted, and also without doing harm; for you have become four years and a half older and I am going hence; indeed, I believe it will help you to hear it. Well, then, the innocence in your soul had become, amidst your peculiar circumstances, a moral atmosphere which in you, more than in any one I ever met, proclaimed itself to be a power. It was all the more beautiful because so unconscious in its manifestations. It was breathed from every manifestation of your bashfulness. It revealed itself to me not alone in your blushes, Magnhild; no, in the tone of your voice also, in the immediate relations you held with every one you had intercourse with, or looked upon, or merely greeted. If there were those in your presence who were not pure, you made them appear abhorrent; you taught even the fallen ones what beauty there is in moral purity. You have the fullest right to rejoice over what I say. Aye, may it bring you more than rejoicing! It is not well to brood over a lost vocation, Magnhild, and the letters I receive from Grong lead me to suppose that this is what you are now doing. One who does not attain the first or greatest object of his ambition ought not to sink into listless inactivity; for do we not thus check the development of the thousand-leaved destiny of the tree of life? May not even disappointment be part of this? * * * * * (Five days later.) Magnhild, I do not say this in self-justification. Every time I think of your singing I realize what I have repressed. It possessed a purity, untouched by passion, and that was why it moved with such exalting influence through my soul. The perfume of tender memories was in it, memories of my childhood, my mother, my good teacher, my first conceptions of music, my first yearning for love, or thirst for beauty. It also revived the first, pure tintings of life, those which had not yet become glaring, still less tainted. I think of your singing artistically schooled, radiant with spirituality--what a revelation! And this I checked in its growth. I bought while we were together some of the brooches made by your father. I showed them to no one. Under the circumstances it would have caused suspicion and consequent annoyance. But in those brooches I felt the family calling, Magnhild, the family work, which your talent should have further continued. In your father's work there is innocent fancy, patience, in its imperfections, as it were, a sigh of far more significant, undeveloped power. Is all this now checked because your progress is checked, you who are the last of your family and without children? No, I cannot justify myself. * * * * *