The two parts forming this story are published separately in Denmark; and Part I, which I have called Cordt, was first issued anonymously as The Old Room, with a preface intended to convey the idea that the work had been written by the heroine of the story. When Part II appeared, under the title of Cordt’s Son, in which Fru Adelheid has returned to the old house and the old room, Carl Ewald suppressed this preface. It is so beautiful that it were unfair to deprive the author’s American readers of the joy of it. The German translator prints it at the end of his version, by way of an appendix; I prefer to give it here:

PREFACE
TO THE FIRST (ANONYMOUS) DANISH
EDITION

I who write this book am still young and fair to look upon and rich and very sad.

My youth and my beauty fill me with horror and I know not what to do with the wealth which I possess. Daily my sorrow sings the same song in my ears. It rustles in the folds of my train; it sighs in the fragrant flowers at my breast. Through the long nights I sit on the edge of my bed thrusting away the dream that comes with glaring eyes.

Now what I have written is a lie.

When I wrote it, it was the truth: now, it is a lie. When I saw it set down on paper, I knew that my youth was my strength and my right; that, if I were ugly, I could not live; and that, if I were poor, I should die.

And now I am glad; and there is nothing on earth but my gladness.

I am in this case.

But I let the words stand as I wrote them, for I know that the time will come—and that soon—when all of them will be true again ... until they once more become a lie.And so my book will grow, through still and stormy times, until the day comes when I am again what I now am.

But that, too, is itself a lie. For I was always the same.

But there came a moment at which HE saw me as I am; and there my book will end. For after that there was but little that differed from the stories in other books and less still that I remember.

Be that as it may, it is true that the world contains a room in which the radiant light of happiness flamed up before my eyes. And the light went out and the door closed upon me.

And, if any one, from what I have here written, comes to think me a great and abject sinner, then he is indeed right. But, if he thinks that I have been cast off by the world, then he is at fault.

For I go with head erect and peacefully along the road that others go; and I am welcome among the best. The lights in the high hall stream down upon my hair; the men honour me with their desire, the women with their ill-will.

There lives only one who knows my guilt and he has condemned me.For it was HE that stayed in the room where the light burns. And she that went out into the street was I.

I am indebted to the collaboration of my friend Mr. Osman Edwards—one of the foremost linguists in Europe—for his translation of the six songs, in which he has carefully preserved both the sense and the exquisite rhythm, and also for many suggestions regarding the accurate solution of such difficulties as occurred in the prose text.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, England, 10 December, 1907.