Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/83

 and the younger one was just the opposite; all life and fire by nature. Her ideas were wrong in the eyes of the other, who believed firmly in all the old traditions and customs.

Often the younger sister had gone with shining eyes to tell of something which filled her brimful of enthusiasm; and when she had finished, the older sister would answer coldly, "Go your own way; as for me I am a Javanese."

Ni's heart would stand still within her, as though touched by a rough hand, she would grow icy cold. The younger sisters too were estranged from her; the older one was not pleased when they were with Ni — Ni who had such strangeideas. And sister was very strong ; the little sisters were afraid of her.

Ni found it hard, but not so hard as to feel that her own mother was opposed to her. She too closed her heart to her, because her child's ideas were diametrically opposed to her own. Poor little Ni — her small soul was longing for tenderness and she found only coldness; where on her side she gave love, she received at best tolerance. Why was she always so strange, so peculiar, so different? Ah, she had tried so often to be like others, to think like others, yet always when she was almost happy, something would happen, that would make the slumbering thoughts burst forth tumultuously, and reproach her for her seeming forgetfulness, so that she would hold to them all the more firmly.

Still her life was not so wholly colourless and dull. There were two who held to her, who loved her just as she was; she felt their love warming her inmost being, and clung to them with all the tenderness of her thirsting heart. They were her father and her third brother — the youngest of her older brothers. It is true that they could not satisfy her most intimate and dearest wish to be free; could never gratify her longing to study. But her dear father was always so good to his little —61—