did not really look, but Dora shivered and said:
"And _that_ is what one has to endure." And then, when we were talking it
over she said to me that _that_ was why Mother was ill and because she
has had five children; Then I was very silly and said: "But how from
_that_? one does not get children from that?" "Of course," she said,
"I thought you knew that already. That time there was such a row with
Mali about the waistband, I thought you and Hella had heard all about
everything." Then I was silly again, really frightfully stupid; for
instead of telling her what I really knew I said: "Oh, yes, I knew all
about it except just that." Then she burst out laughing and said: "After
all, what you and Hella know doesn't amount to much." And in the end she
told me a _little_. If it's really as Dora says, then she is right when
she says it is better not to marry. One can fall in love, one must fall
in love, but one can just break off the engagement. Well, that's the
best way out of the difficulty for then no one can say that you've never
had a man in love with you. We walked up and down in front of the school
for such a long time that we were very nearly late and only got in just
as the bell rang. On the way home I told Hella the awful thing we'd seen
the man do. She does not know either what "abnormal" really means _as
far as this is concerned_. But now we shall use it as an expression for
something horrible. Of course no one will understand us. And then Hella
told me about a drunken man who in Nagy K. . . . was walking through the
streets _like that_ and was arrested. She says _too_ that one can never
forget seeing anything like _that_. Perhaps the man this morning was
drunk too. But he didn't look as if he were drunk. And if he hadn't done
_that_ one would really have taken him for a fine gentleman. Hella knows
too that it is from _that_ that one gets children. She explained it
all to me and now I can quite understand that _that_ must make one ill.
Yesterday it was after 11 at night and so I'm finishing to-day. Hella
says: _That_ is the original sin, and _that_ is the sin which Adam
and Eve committed. Before I had always believed the original sin was
something quite different. But that--that. Since yesterday I've been so
upset I always seem to be seeing _that_; really I did not look at all,
but I must have seen it all the same.

March 30th. I don't know why, but in the history lesson to-day it all
came into my head once more wha