While the dean therefore was sitting in his study either with his sermons or some work on Christian ethics before him, Odegaard was with the ladies, whom he was constantly comparing. Petra was versatile, never alike; he who would follow her, must study as in a book. Signe, on the contrary, was so winning in her unvarying cordiality, her movements were never unexpected; they were the reflection of her being. Petra's voice had all colours, sharp and mild, and every intermediate grade. Signe's possessed a peculiar harmony, but was not changing--except to the father, who understood to distinguish its tones. Petra was with one at a time; if she were with more, it was to observe, certainly not to help. Signe had an eye to all and everybody, and divided her attention without its being observed. If Odegaard spoke about Signe with Petra, he heard a hopeless lover's complaint; but if he talked about Petra with Signe, the words were very few. The girls often talked together, and without constraint; but it was only upon indifferent subjects. To Signe, Odegaard owed a debt of gratitude; for it was to her he owed, what he called his "new self." The first letter he received from her in his great distress, was like a gentle touch upon his forehead. So carefully she told how Petra had come to them, misunderstood and persecuted, so delicately she added, that the accident of her arrival might be the guidance of God, "that nothing should be rent in pieces;" it sounded like a distant horn in the forest, as one stands and wonders which direction to take. Signe's letters followed him where he travelled, and were the thread he held by. She thought in every line to lead Petra straight to his embrace, but in reality she was doing just the opposite; for through these letters, Petra's taste for art rose up before him; the key note to her talents, which he had sought for himself in vain, Signe, without knowing it, had constantly in view,--and as soon as he understood this, he saw both his own and her mistake, and thereby became as a new man. He watched himself narrowly in writing to Signe about that which her letters had taught him. The first word must not come from Petra's friends, but from Petra herself, that nothing should be hastened before its time. But now he also saw Petra in a new light. These moments constantly chasing one another, each one individually felt in full power, but regarded ad infinitum, opposed to each other, what could they be but the foreshadowing of an artist life? And the work must be to unite them into a complete whole; otherwise it would be only patchwork, and life itself unreal. Therefore: not too early to enter upon her career! Reticence as long as possible, yes even opposition.