of a solitary
retreat that your plan was almost perfect. Every time we met last year
we talked about the "White Villa," as we called it, and it pleased us to
share this little secret together. Nor were you less interested in the
interior of the house; in making sketches for the furniture, and
arranging the decorations. You took a real delight in this task,
although you were annoyed that you had no personal knowledge of your
client. You remember that I said to you sometimes in joke: "Plan it as
though it were for me"; and I cannot forget what you replied one day: "I
hate the idea of a stranger living in the house which I planned with you
always in my mind."

Judge for yourself, Malthe, how painful it was to leave you in error.
But I could not speak out then, for I had to consider my husband. For
this reason I avoided meeting you during the summer; I found it
impossible to keep up the deception when we were face to face.

It is I--I myself--who will live in the "White Villa." I shall live
there quite alone.

It is useless for me to say, "Do not be angry." You would not be what
you are if you were not annoyed about it.

You are young, life lies before you. I am old. In a very few years I
shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a
time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping
on your youth in order to vex you--your youth that you hate for my sake!
I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life
and the march of time are alike inexorable.

When I enter the new home you have planned for me, a lonely and divorced
woman, I shall think of you every day, and my thoughts will speak more
cordial thanks than I can set down coldly in black and white on this
paper.

I do not forbid you to write to me, but, save for a word of farewell, I
would prefer your silence. No letters exchanged between us could bring
back so much as a reflection of the happy hours we have spent together.
Hours in which we talked of everything, and chiefly of nothing at all.

I do not think we were very brilliant when we were together; but we were
never bored. If my absence brings you suffering, disappointment,
grief--lose yourself in your work, so that in my solitude I may still be
proud of you.

You taught me to use my eyes, and there is much, much in the world I
should like to see, for, thanks to you, I have learnt how beautiful the
world is. But the wisest course for me is t