nature itself had raised a wall between them. Rebecca Gram would never know a tenth part of the sufferings her children had endured for her sake. And a friend of her mother's was still mourning her handsome boy, who had been killed by an accident, and dreaming of the future that would have been his; she was the only person who did not know that he had shot himself as the only way of escape from insanity.
Love of one's children did not exclude any other love; one or two mothers among her acquaintances had lovers, and believed that the children did not know. Some were divorced, and found happiness in new ties; only if the new love brought disappointment did they ever complain or regret. Her own mother had idolized her—yet there was room for Berner in her heart too, and she had been happy with him. Gert had been fond of his children—and a father's affection is more understanding, more a matter of reflection and less instinctive than a mother's—yet he had scarcely thought of Helge all last winter.
Jenny had been to fetch their mail bag at the station; and gave Francesca the papers and the letters, and opened the one addressed to herself. Standing on the gravel of the station platform in the blazing sun, she looked through Gert's long effusion, reading the expressions of love at the beginning and the end and skipping the rest, which was only a mass of observations on love in general. She put it back in the envelope and placed it in her hand-bag. Ugh! those letters from Gert—she could not be bothered to read them. Every word proved to her that they did not understand one another; she felt it when they talked together, but in writing it was more painfully distinct still. Yet there was a mental relation-
