She was alone again in the great void. Deserted. For was it not desertion that everything she had seen and heard in three continents—of the life of the nations, their toil and their pleasure, their art, their music—should have to be left behind? She had seen and heard; and now she was alone, in a dreary, stagnant waste.
AT HOME
The reality was something quite different.
She saw, the moment she set foot on land, that both old and young were unfeignedly happy to see her again. Every face brightened. Every one whom they met on the way up to the market-place recognised and greeted her with pleasure. She had not thought of them, but they had thought of her.
From the house on the market-place they were to go on later in the day to Krogskogen, with the coasting-steamer. In the interval many of their relations called, who all expressed great pleasure at seeing them home again at last. They told what a success Mary's Spanish portrait had been—in their own town, in Christiania, and then on its tour with other pictures through the country. The notices—but these she had of course read? No, she had read no newspapers, except occasionally one published at the place where they were living. "Do you read no home newspapers?" "Yes, when Father shows me them." Had not her father, had not Mrs. Dawes, told her anything? "No." Why, she was famous now throughout the whole of Norway. For this was the third portrait of her—or was it the fourth? Anyhow it was the finest. It had been reproduced in the illustrated newspapers; and also in an English art-magazine, the Studio. Did she not know that? "No." The young people here were very proud of her. They had put off their spring picnic and dance until she came home.
"You are to be fêted!"
"I?"
"The picnic is to be at Marielyst. One steamer goes from here, and another comes from the places on the opposite side. Jörgen Thiis planned it all in Paris."
"Jörgen Thiis?"