On the contrary the more difficult
it became for both, the more she was pleased, that the aristocracy of
soul which she herself possessed was repeated in her young daughter in
a certain healthy inflexibility.
Once upon a time--it was a time many, many years ago, when she herself
had been an eighteen-year old girl, she had loved with all her soul,
with every sense in her body, every living hope, every thought. It was
not to be, could not be. He had had nothing to offer except his
loyalty which would have involved the test of an endlessly long
engagement, and there were circumstances in her home which could not
wait. So she had taken the one whom they had given her, the one who
was master over these circumstances. They were married, then came
children: Tage, the son, who was with her in Avignon, and the
daughter, who sat beside her, Everything had turned out so much better
than she could have hoped for, both easier and more friendly. Eight
years it lasted, then the husband died, and she mourned him with a
sincere heart. She had learned to love his fine, thin-blooded nature
which with a tense, egotistic, almost morbid love loved whatever
belonged to it by ties of relationship or family, and cared nought for
anything in all the great world outside, except for what they thought,
what their opinion was--nothing else. After her husband's death she
had lived chiefly for her children, but she had not devoted herself
exclusively to them; she had taken part in social life, as was natural
for so young and well-to-do a widow; and now her son was twenty-one
years old and she lacked not many days of forty.
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