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paintings. You will remember that he is always standing in
the background, or on one side, sadly and tenderly contemplating
the Divine Child and its young and beautiful mother, who
are absorbed in each other and do not notice his presence.
Don’t misunderstand me, dear Jenny; I know that the little
child lying in your lap is also flesh and blood of mine, but,
when I think of you as a mother, I cannot help feeling myself
out in the cold like poor old Joseph.
“You must not hesitate to accept my name as my wife and
the protection it would give you and the child any more than
Mary hesitated to submit herself to the care of Joseph. And
I do not consider it quite right towards the child to rob it of
its father’s name, to which it has a right, however much
confidence you may have in yourself. It goes without saying that
in such a marriage you would remain as free and independent
as before, and that it could be legally dissolved whenever you
wished. I beg of you to think it over. We might go through
the ceremony abroad, and a few months afterwards steps might
be taken to obtain a divorce, if that is your wish; you need
not come back to Norway, nor even live under the same roof
with me at all.
“There is not much to tell about myself. I have two small
rooms in this part of the country, not far from the place where
I was born and lived till I was ten years old. From my
window I can see the tops of the two big chestnut trees standing at
the entrance to the home of my childhood. They look very
much the same as they did then. Up here the evenings are
beginning to be long and light and spring like, and their naked
brown branches stand outlined against the pale green sky,
where a few solitary stars glitter in the sharp, clear air.
Evening after evening I sit by my window staring in the same
direction, dreaming and recalling to memory my whole life.
How could I ever forget, Jenny dear, that between you and me
there was a whole life almost twice as long as yours, and more
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