The old Baroness was in her most positive and determined mood. "Now you must take a leave of absence for a year and finish the book. I shall procure the money."
Fifteen minutes later the girl was on her way to the Principal of the Teachers' College to ask her assistance in securing a substitute.
At one o'clock she was happily seated in the railway carriage. But now she was going no farther than Sörmland, where she had good friends who lived in a charming villa.
And so they—Otto Gumaelius and his wife—gave her the freedom of their home—freedom to work, and peace, and the best of care for nearly a year, until the book was finished.
Now, at last, she could write from morning till night. It was the happiest time of her life.
But when the story was finished at the close of the summer, it looked queer. It was wild and disordered, and the connecting threads were so loose that all the parts seemed bent upon following their old inclination to wander off, each in its own way.
It never became what it should have been. Its misfortune was that it had been compelled to wait so long to be told. If it was not properly disciplined and restrained, it was mostly because the author was so overjoyed in the thought that at last she had been privileged to write it.
[1] Baroness Adlersparre—pen name, Esselde—was a noted Swedish writer, publisher, and philanthropist, and a contemporary of Fredrika Bremer.