Have you any idea of the things you make me think of? My mother
loved by a strange man, my mother desired, held in the arms of another
and holding him in hers. Nice thoughts for a son, worse than the worst
insult--but it is impossible, must be impossible, must be! Are the
prayers of a son to be as powerless as that! Elinor, don't sit there
and cry, come and help me beg mother to have pity on us."
Mrs. Fonss made a restraining gesture with her hand and said: "Let
Elinor alone, she is probably tired enough, and besides I have told
you that nothing can be changed."
"I wish I were dead," said Elinor, "but, mother, everything that Tage
has said is true, and it never can be right that at our age you should
give us a step-father."
"Step-father," cried Tage, "I hope that he does not for one moment
dare. . . . You are mad. Where he enters, we go out. There isn't any
power on earth that can force me into the slightest intimacy with that
person. Mother must choose--he or we! If they go to Denmark after
their marriage, then we are exiles; if they stay here, we leave."
"And those are your intentions, Tage?" asked Mrs. Fonss.
"I don't think you need doubt that; imagine the life. Ida and I are
sitting out there on the terrace on a moonlit evening, and behind the
laurel-bushes some one is whispering. Ida asks who is whispering, and
I reply that it is my mother and her new husband.--No, no, I
shouldn't have said that; but you see the effect of it already, the
pain it causes me, and you may be sure that it won't help Elinor's
health either.
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