human
You will love, my boy, but with your nature how could love mean happiness to you? Love? No man could love more terribly. You will be intent, resolved, but the firmness of your will means that much more suffering for you. You will suffer, my boy--I see that for you, my first-born boy! You will love--why should you not, a man fit to love and be loved by any woman? But that love, the stronger it grows, will but burn you the deeper. You will struggle through on your own path; but happiness does not lie at the end of that path for you. You will succeed, yes--you could not fail; but always the load on your shoulders will grow heavier and heavier. You will carry it alone, until at last it will be too much for you. Your strong heart will break. You will lie down and die. Such a fate for you, Merne, my boy--such a man as you will be!
gpt
Well, then, go on! she said, and withdrew her hands from his shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the gold-flecked slope before them.
human
Go on, you are a man. I know you will not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will not turn--because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die.
gpt
You give me no long shrift, mother?
human
How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son's future--if she dares to read it. She knows--she knows!
gpt
Listen, Merne, she said.
human
You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now I could not fail to know. I tell you that your great desire, the great wish of your life, shall be yours! You never will relinquish it, you always will possess it, and at last it will be yours.
gpt
Your great desire will cost me my son. Be it so! We breed men for the world, we women, and we give them up. Out of the agony of our hearts, we do and must always give them up. That is the price I must pay. But I give you up to the great hope, the great thing of your life. Should I complain? Am I not your mother, and therefore a woman? And should a woman complain? But, Oh, Merne, Merne, my son, my boy!