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240
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
naturally filled her mind. Then it was that she began
to ponder on the difference of " how it was, and how
it might have been." She remembered with what
dreams, what infatuations, she and her sister had
commenced life, young, handsome, and richly
endowed as they both were. She realized how little
had been given of all that they had pictured to
themselves in their day-dreams. Life had, indeed, been to
them rich and varied, but in the depths of both their
hearts was a bitter feeling of disappointment.
Ah, how utterly different, would Sönya say to
herself, might it not have been had they not both of them
committed mistakes! From these thoughts was bred
the idea of writing two parallel romances which should
depict the history of a human being in two different
ways. Early youth, with all its possibilities, should be
described, and a series of pictures followed up to some
important event. The one romance was to show the
consequence of the choice made at the critical moment,
and the other romance was to figure " what might have
been" had that choice been different. " Who is there
who has not some false step to regret," soliloquized
Sönya, "and who has not often wished to begin life
anew 1"
She wished, in this work, to give the reality of life
in a literary form, if only she had talent enough to
produce it. She did not then know that she possessed
the power of writing. So when she returned to
Stockholm she tried to persuade me to undertake the
romance. At that time I had begun a book called
" Utomkringäktenskap," which was to be the history of
old maids; of those who, for one reason or another,
had never been called upon to become the head of a
family. Their thoughts, their ideas of love and
marriage, the interests and struggles of their lives, were
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