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Hermann Sudermann
A Novel
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"Dear old Uncle,--You shall be the first to know it. If only I had you with me, that I might press your dear old hands and tell you face to face what is in my heart! I do not realise it yet--my head whirls when I think of it! Uncle, you were at my side in the days of darkest trouble, helping and protecting. You were the only one to take Martha's part when all--even my parents turned their backs on her with coldness and suspicion.
"You could not save her for me, uncle--the Lord asked her back of me. But when, at the bedside of my dead wife, my reason threatened to give way, you took my poor head between your hands and spoke to me--as a preacher speaks. And you were right. Of course I do not believe that I can ever quite revive and become again as I was before the cares of existence and my longing for Martha made my head dull and heavy; for even Martha--even my wife--could not accomplish that in the three years of our quiet happiness. But life seems about to give me whatever it has left for me yet of joy and peace. You know, uncle, how in the midst of my sorrow for my dead wife, I learnt to love her sister. Cousin Olga, more and more. I confessed all to you, and sought comfort with you when tortured by self-reproach at the thought that I was breaking my troth to my wife already in the year of mourning. And you said to me at that time: 'If the dead woman might seek a second mother for her child, whom else would she choose but the sister whom, next to you, she loved best in the world?' I was startled to the very depths of my soul, for I should never have dared to raise my eyes to her. But you never ceased to encourage me, until, a week ago, I took heart and begged her to share my fortunes.
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