"Unfortunately, he imagined he was a genius, and gradually, as things got worse and worse, the struggle for a bare existence made him bitter, till he hated the world, and looked upon himself as a martyr condemned to suffering.
"Then he took to staying out late of an evening, and wrote less and less. By the time we had been there a year, the poet's wife was washing lace to keep the home together. In the autumn of the second year, he went down with pneumonia, and a week after the 'Nordland sun' was a widow. I couldn't go home, for I'd cut myself adrift from them completely when I married. There was nothing for it but to struggle along as best I could by myself, unknown and friendless in the great city. But, thank Heaven, I've always had my health and a cheerful temper, and little Betty was such a darling."
"Yes, she's a wonderful girl."
"She and I have fought our way together, Mr. Holm, and a hard fight it has been at times, believe me.
"Well, we got along somehow in Paris, for a few years, doing needlework, or giving music lessons at fifty centimes an hour. It was a cheerless existence mostly, as you can imagine, and if it hadn't been for the child I should have broken down long before.
"Then at last I got the offer of a place as accompanist at a concert hall in Hamburg, with a salary of a hundred marks a month for three hours' work every evening and two rehearsals a week. This was splendid, and I was in the highest spirits when I left Paris. Besides, it was a little nearer home, and I used to be desperately home-sick at times, though I knew it was hopeless to think of going back.
"Imagine my feelings, then, when I got to the place and found it was a common music hall; though very decent, really, for a place of that sort."
"It was a beautiful place—at least, I thought so, when I saw you there."
"Well, there I sat, night after night, accompanying all sorts of more or less third-rate artistes. It used to make me wild, I remember, when they sang false, or were awkward in their gestures; I used to look at them in a way they would remember. And really, I managed to make them respect me after a time, though I was only twenty-five myself.
"Then, besides my evenings there, I gradually worked up a little connection giving music and singing lessons outside, till I was making enough to live fairly comfortably.