Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/176

 and snatching it from my hands began at once to smooth it out.

"I fancy it is a treasure!" I said, with a bitterness which I could not possibly conceal.

She looked at me reproachfully.

"If you ever leave me, even with far bitterer words, I would do as much for your letter, Harald." And she put back the letter in the blotter.

The touching faithfulness to all her heart's remembrances, that breathed from her words and manner, disarmed me, but a sting of ill-feeling was left behind.

"I was wrong, forgive me—but it is a letter which might make an angel swear, there is neither meaning nor sound sense in it."

"No; I do not understand him. It was he, after all, who wished that our intercourse should be friendship only, and who advised me to marry an honest man, and now he reproaches me for doing so."

"And in such a foolish way! Why does he not express his own feelings? A poem by Heine! It would be foolish even if it was appropriate, which it is not, by any means."

"Just so; it was that which also struck me so strangely as a false note. Otherwise, it would have hurt me much more, or perhaps it might have reconciled me. But at this I could not help feeling annoyed."

"His vanity has been hurt by your forgetting him for another, that is all. Therefore, he has nothing to say himself. Most men would have sought refuge in 'The Complete Letter-writer,' being an artist he betook himself to Heine."

"And yet, if he still loved me and suffered!" she exclaimed and clenched her hands.

"Loved? There are so many different ways of loving. Why did he leave you?"