You are an honest man, and what I have been telling you will come as a shock. You will not understand it, or me.
Yet I think that you, too, must have known and possessed women without loving them. But that is not the same. If it were, my guilt would be less.
I allowed my senses to be inflamed, while my mind remained cold, and my heart contracted with disgust. I consciously profaned the sacred words of love by applying them to a man whom I chose for his money.
Meanwhile I developed into the frivolous society woman everybody took me to be. Every woman wears the mask which best suits her purpose. My mask was my smile. I did not wish others to see through me. Sometimes, during a sudden silence, I have caught the echo of my own laugh—that laugh in which you, too, delighted—and hearing it I have shuddered.
No! That is not quite true. I was a different woman with you. A real, living creature lived and breathed behind the mask. You taught me to live. You looked into my eyes, and heard my real laughter.
How many hours we spent together, Joergen, you and I! But we did not talk much; we never came to the exchange of ideas. I hardly remember anything you ever said; although I often try to recall your words. How did we pass the happy time together?
You are the only man I ever loved.
When we first got to know each other you were five-and-twenty. So young—and I was eight years your senior. We fell in love with each other at once.
You had no idea that I cared for you.
From that moment I was a changed woman. Not better perhaps, but quite different. A thousand new feelings awoke in me; I saw, heard, and felt in an entirely new way. All humanity assumed a new aspect. I, who had hitherto been so indifferent to the weal or woe of my fellow-creatures, began to observe and to understand them. I became sympathetic. Towards women—not towards men. I do not understand the male sex, and this must be my excuse for the way in which I have so often treated men. For me there was, and is, only one man in the world: Joergen Malthe.