weak. And I waited for it day after day
and month after month--I had already written to say good-bye to you.
But death did not come--I had to go on living.

"I have been so ill, Olof--it is my heart. Perhaps I am too sensitive;
they called me a dreamer when I was a child. And even now that I am
older they have said the same. But how could I ever forget you, and
the hours that were the confession and communion of my whole life? How
could I forget those evenings when I sat at your feet and looked into
your eyes? Olof, I can feel it all still, and tremble at the thought
of it.

"You must forgive me all this. It feels easier now that I have spoken
to you and told you about it all--how I still feel, grateful to you
for all you gave me then. I was very childish and poor then, and had
nothing to give you in return--now, afterwards, I could perhaps have
given you something too. I should have been so happy if we could have
been together always; earth would have been like heaven, and none but
angels everywhere. And even now I can be so happy, though I only have
you in secret. Secretly I say good-night to you, and kiss you, and
no one knows that you rest every night in my arms. And, do you know,
Olof, there is one thing that is so strange, I hardly know what it
means. Now, just lately, I have felt sometimes that you were really
here, your living self, sitting beside me and whispering that I was
yours, your love, your friend. And it makes me so happy--but I always
cry afterwards.

"There was one thing more--but I can't think what it was. Something
about ... yes, now I remember. The greatest and loveliest of all, that
I asked you for Shall I tell you? The miracle has happened, though no
one knows about it. You gave it me after all, that spring when I was
so ill. And I could not live without it. He is two years old now--oh,
if you could only see him! His eyes and his voice--they are just your
very own. Do not be anxious about him. I will be so careful, and see
that he grows up a fine man. I have sewed every stitch of his clothes
myself, and he looks like a prince--there never was such a child.
We are always together, and talking of you. I am sorry for mother
sometimes; she looks so strangely at me, and says I go about talking
to myself--but how could she know of my prince and his father, and why
I talk? Talking to myself, she says. But I am talking to the child all
the time.

"There, and what more was I going to say? I can't rem