lieve, that everything would turn out
well.

They agreed that Thorbrogger should leave for Denmark to arrange their
affairs. For the time being they would remain here. It seemed, however,
that nothing was gained by this. The children avoided her. Tage spent
all his time with Ida or her father, and Elinor stayed all the time
with the invalid, Mrs. Kastager. And when they happened to be actually
together, the old intimacy, the old feeling of comfort, was gone. Where
were the thousand subjects for conversation, and, when finally they
found one, where was the interest in it? They sat there keeping up
a conversation like people who for a while have enjoyed each other's
company, and now must part. All the thoughts of those who are about to
leave are fixed on the journey's end, and those who remain think only
of settling hack into the daily life and daily routine, as soon as the
strangers have left.

There was no longer any common interest in their life; all the feeling
of belonging together had disappeared. They were able to talk about
what they were going to do next week, next month, or even the month
following, but it did not interest them as though it had to do with days
out of their own lives. It was merely a time of waiting, which somehow
or other had to be endured, for all three mentally asked themselves: And
what then? They felt no solid foundation in their lives; there was no
ground to build upon before this, which had separated them, was settled.

Every day that passed the children forgot more and more what their
mother had meant to them, in the fashion in which children who believe
themselves wronged will forget a thousand benefactions for the sake of
one injustice.

Tage was the most sensitive of them, but also the one who was hurt
most deeply, because he had loved most. He had wept through long nights
because of his mother whom he could not retain in the way in which he
wanted. There were times when the memory of her love almost deafened all
other feelings in his heart. One day he even went to her and beseeched
and implored her that she might belong to them, to them alone, and not
to any other one, and the answer had been a "no." And this "no" had made
him hard and cold. At first he had been afraid of this coldness, because
it was accompanied by a frightful emptiness.

The case with Elinor was different. In a strange way she had felt that
it was an injustice toward her father, and she began to worship him lik