I

There was a wait of several minutes at Frederikshald—time for a cup of coffee. Jenny hurried along the platform; then suddenly she stopped to listen. Somewhere, near by, a lark was singing overhead. Once back in her compartment she leaned back in her corner and closed her eyes, her heart heavy with longing for the south.

The train rushed past small rocks of red granite, torn as it were from the mountain range, and between them dazzling glimpses of deep-blue fjords met the eye. Spruce trees clung to the mountain-side, with the afternoon sun on their reddish trunks and dark green, shiny needles. Everything in nature seemed conspicuously clear and clean after its bath of melting snow. The naked branches of foliferous trees stood out distinctly against the thin air, and little streamlets gurgled alongside the line.

It was all so different from the southern spring, with its slow, sound breathing and softly blended colours—she missed it so much. The sharp colouring now before her eyes reminded her of other springs, when she had been filled with longing for a joy far different from her present restful happiness.

Oh! for the spring out there, with the sprouting vegetation on the immense plain and the firm, severe lines of the encircling mountains, which man has robbed of their woods, to build stone-grey cities on the spurs and plant olive groves on the slopes. For thousands of years life has been teeming on the sides of the mountain, borne by it in patience, yet it raises its crown in eternal solitude and quiet towards heaven. Its proud outlines and subdued green and silvery grey colouring, the ancient cities and the slowly advancing spring—in spite of all that can be said of the tumultuous life of the south—make one’s own life run with a calmer, healthier beat, that meets the coming of spring with greater equanimity than here, where it comes in such mighty waves.

Oh, Helge! She longed to be out there with him. It was so far away, and so long since it all happened. Not quite a week, yet it seemed almost a dream, as if she had never been away at all. But she had been there—not here to see and feel how the white, frosty, peaceful winter yielded and the dry, strong, light blue air, drenched with mist in the middle of the day, hung quivering over the ground. Every outline was blurred or broken, but the colours were vivid and sharp—naked, as it were—until evening came, when everything froze under a sky of pale green, everlasting light.

—You dear boy of mine—what are you doing now? I miss you so, and I want to be with you. I can scarcely believe that you are mine, and I can’t bear to be alone, longing for you, all this bright, long spring.—

As the train proceeded on its way the scenery changed. Strips of snow showed among the trees and along the fences; the soft, shaded brown of the faded meadows and the ploughed fields met the eye, and the intense blue of the sky toned down near the horizon. The undulating line of the forest-clad mountain slopes lay far away; the branches of detached groups of trees in the fields gave the effect of lattice-work against the sky. The old grey houses of the farms shone like silver, and the new barns were glowing red. The pine needles formed an olive green background for the purple buds of the beeches and the light green of the aspens.

Such is spring: glowing colours that last a little while, then everything turns a golden green, swelling with the sap of life, and ripens in a few weeks into full summer—spring, when no joy is great enough. Evening fell, the last long red sunrays vanished behind a ridge, and the golden light in the cloudless sky faded slowly.

When the train left Moss, the mountain ridge stood dark against the clear sky, and the reflection of it in the green fjord was black and transparent. One single large, bright star rose behind the range; its light was mirrored in a filmy golden thread on the water.

It reminded her of Francesca’s nocturnes; she was fond of reproducing the colourings after sunset. Jenny wondered how things were going with Cesca, and she felt a pang of conscience when she realized that she had seen very little of her in the two last months. Cesca was working hard and was perhaps in difficulties, but all Jenny’s intentions to have a good long talk with her had come to nothing.

It was dark when she arrived at her destination; her mother, Bodil, and Nils were at the station to meet her.

It was as if she had seen her mother a week ago, but Mrs. Berner cried when she kissed her daughter: “Welcome home, my darling child—God bless you!” Bodil had grown, and looked very smart in a long coat and skirt. Kalfatrus greeted her shyly.

As she came out of the station she smelt the odour peculiar to the railway square of Christiania—a mixture of sea-water, coal smoke, and dried herring.

The cab drove along Carl Johan, past the old familiar houses. Mrs. Berner asked about the journey, and where she had spent the night. It seemed all so commonplace to Jenny, as if she had never been away from it. The two young people on the back seat said never a word.

Outside a garden gate in Wergelandsveien a young couple stood kissing each other good-night. A few stars twinkled in the clear deep blue sky above the naked trees in the Castle gardens. A smell of mouldering leaves came through the carriage window, reminding her of melancholy springs of old.

The cab stopped at the house where they lived. There was light still in the dairy on the ground floor; the woman came out on the doorstep, when she heard the cab, and said: “Good evening; welcome back,” to Jenny. Ingeborg came rushing down the stairs to embrace her, and hurried up again, carrying her sister’s bag. Supper was laid in the sitting-room, and Jenny saw her napkin with her father’s silver ring in her old place beside Kalfatrus. Ingeborg hurried into the kitchen, and Bodil went with Jenny to her old room at the back, which had been Ingeborg’s during her absence, and still harboured some of her belongings. On the walls were some picture cards of actors; Napoleon and Madame RÉcamier in mahogany frames hung on either side of Jenny’s old empire mirror above the antique chest of drawers.

Jenny washed and did her hair; she felt an irritation in her skin from the journey, and passed the powder-puff a couple of times over her face. Bodil sniffed the powder to see if it was scented. They went to supper. Ingeborg had a nice hot meal ready; she had been to a cookery school that winter. In the light of the lamp Jenny saw that her young sisters had their thick curly hair tied up with silk bows. Ingeborg’s small, dark face was thinner, but she did not cough any longer. She saw, too, that mamma had grown older—or had she perhaps not noticed, when she was at home and saw her every day, that the small wrinkles in her mother’s pretty face increased, that the tall, girlish figure stooped a little, and that the shoulders lost their roundness? Since she grew up she had always been told that her mother looked like an elder and prettier sister of hers.

They spoke about everything that had happened at home during the year.

“Why didn’t we take a taxi?” said Nils suddenly. “How stupid of us to ride home in an old four-wheeler!”

“Well, it’s too late now; no good crying over spilt milk,” laughed Jenny.

The luggage arrived; her mother and sisters watched the unpacking with interest. Ingeborg and Bodil carried the things into Jenny’s room and put them in the drawers; the embroidered underlinen, which Jenny told them she had bought in Paris, was handled almost with reverence. There was great joy over the gifts to themselves: shantung for summer dresses and Italian bead necklaces. They draped themselves in the stuff before the glass, and tried the effect of the beads in their hair. Kalfatrus alone showed some interest in her pictures, trying to lift the box that contained her canvases.

“How many have you brought?”

“Twenty-six, but they are mostly small ones.”

“Are you going to have a private exhibition—all by yourself?”

“I don’t know yet—I may, some day.”

While the girls were washing up and Nils was making his bed on the sofa, Mrs. Berner and Jenny had a chat in Jenny’s room over a cup of tea and a cigarette.

“What do you think of Ingeborg?” asked Mrs. Berner anxiously.

“She looks well and bright, but, of course, she will need looking after. We must send her to live in the country till she gets quite strong again.”

“She is so sweet and good always—bright and full of fun, and so useful in the house. I am so anxious about her; I think she has been out too much last winter, dancing too much, and keeping late hours, but I had not the heart to refuse her anything. You had such a sad childhood, Jenny—I know you missed the company of other children, and I was sure you and papa would think it right to let the child have all the pleasure she could.” She sighed. “My poor little girls, they have nothing to look forward to but work and privations. What am I to do if they get ill besides? I can do so little.”

Jenny bent over her mother and kissed the tears from her pretty, childish eyes. The longing to give and to receive tenderness, the remembrance of her early childhood, and the consciousness that her mother did not know her life—its sorrows before and its happiness now—melted into a feeling of protecting love, and she gathered her mother into her arms.

“Don’t cry, mother dear. Everything will come all right. I am going to stay at home for the present, and we have still something left of Aunt Katherine’s money.”

“No, Jenny, you must keep that for yourself. I understand now that you must not be hampered in any way in your work. It was such a joy to us all when your picture at the exhibition was sold last autumn.”

Jenny smiled. The fact that she had sold a picture and had two or three lines in the papers about it made her people look upon her work in quite a different light.

“Don’t worry about me, mother. It is all right. I may be able to earn something while I am here. I must have a studio, though,” she said, after a pause, adding as an explanation: “I must finish my pictures in a studio, you see.”

“But you will live at home, won’t you?” asked the mother anxiously.

Jenny did not answer.

“It won’t do, my dear child, for a young girl to live alone in a studio.”

“Very well,” said Jenny; “I shall live at home.”

When she was alone she took out Helge’s photo and sat down to write to him. She had been home only a couple of hours, and yet everything she had lived through out there, where he was, seemed so far away and altogether apart from her life here, before or now. The letter was one single cry of yearning.

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II

Jenny had hired a studio and was arranging it to her taste. Kalfatrus came in the afternoons and helped her.

“You have grown so tall that I almost thought I could not call you by the old name any longer.”

The boy laughed.

Jenny asked about all his doings while she had been away, and Nils told her of the extraordinary adventures he and two boy friends had had while they lived for some weeks in the log huts in Nordmarken. As she listened, it crossed her mind that her trips up there with him were now things of the past.

She went in the mornings to the outskirts of the city—to walk by herself in the sunshine. The fields lay yellow with dead grass, there was still snow under the pines, but tiny buds were coming out on the foliage trees and from underneath the dead leaves peeped downy shoots of the blue anemone. She read Helge’s letters again and again; she carried them about her wherever she went. She longed for him impatiently, madly—longed to see him and touch him and convince herself that he was hers.

She had been back twelve days and had not yet been to see his parents; when he asked her a third time if she had been, she made up her mind to go next day. The weather had changed in the night; a strong north wind was blowing, the sun shone with a sharp light, and clouds of dust were whirling in the streets. Then came a hail-storm so violent that she had to take refuge in a doorway. The hard white grains rebounded from the pavement on to her shoes and frivolous summer stockings. Next moment the sun came out again.

The Grams lived in Welhavensgate. At the corner Jenny stopped for a moment to look about; the two rows of grey houses stood almost completely in the raw, icy shade; on the one side a narrow strip of sun fell on the top floor; she was pleased to think that Helge’s parents lived there.

Her way to school had been along this street for four years. She knew it well—the small shops, the black marks of snow on the plaster ornaments of the front entrances, the plants in majolica pots or coloured tissue paper in the windows, the fashion-plates against the panes at the dressmaker’s, and the narrow gateway leading to dark back-yards, where small heaps of dirty snow made the air still more raw. A tramcar rolled heavily up the hill.

Close to where she stood, in the other street, was a large house with a dark yard; they had lived there when her stepfather died.

Outside a door with a brass plate, with “G. Gram” engraved on it; she stood still for a moment, her heart beating. She tried to laugh at herself for this senseless feeling of oppression each time she had to face anything new, for which she had not prepared her mind in advance. Why should she consider her future parents-in-law of such importance? They could not hurt her.... She rang the bell.

She heard somebody coming through the hall; then the door opened. It was Helge’s mother; she knew her from a photograph.

“Are you Mrs. Gram? I am Miss Winge.”

“Oh yes—please come in.”

Jenny followed her through a long, narrow hall encumbered with cupboards, boxes, and outdoor clothes.

Mrs. Gram opened the door to the drawing-room. At this moment the sun came in, showing up the moss-green plush furniture, curtains and portiÉres of the same material, and the vivid colours of the carpet. The room was small and very full—photographs and sundry fancy articles stood in every possible place.

“I am afraid it is very untidy here. I have not had time to dust for several days,” said Mrs. Gram. “We don’t use this room every day, and I have no servant just now. I had to dismiss the one I had—she was so dirty and always answering back, but it’s hard to get another at all, and just as well, for they’re all alike as far as that goes. Keeping house nowadays—it’s simply dreadful. Helge told us you would be coming, but we had almost given up hope of seeing you.”

When she talked and laughed she showed big, white front teeth and a black hole on either side, where two were missing.

Jenny sat looking at the woman who was Helge’s mother—how different it all was from what she had imagined.

She had formed a picture in her mind of Helge’s home and mother from his descriptions, and she had pitied the woman whom the husband did not love and who had loved the children so much that they had rebelled and longed to get away from this tyrannic mother-love that could not bear them ever to be anything but her children. In her heart she had taken the mother’s part. Men did not understand to what extent a woman could change who loved and got no love in return except the love of small children; they could not understand what a mother would feel at seeing her children grow up and glide away from her, or how she could rise in defiance and anger against the inexorable life that let little children grow up and cease to feel their mother everything to them, while they were everything to her as long as she lived.

Jenny had wanted to love Helge’s mother—and she could not do it; on the contrary, she felt an almost physical antipathy towards Mrs. Gram as she talked on and on.

The features were the same as Helge’s—the high, slightly narrow forehead, the beautifully carved nose, and the even, dark brows, the same small mouth with thin lips, and the pointed chin. But there was an expression about her mouth as if everything she said were spiteful, and a malicious and scornful look about the fine wrinkles of the face. The remarkably well-shaped eyes, bluish in the white, were hard and piercing. They were large, dark brown eyes—much darker than Helge’s.

She had been uncommonly pretty; yet Jenny was convinced she was right in thinking that Gert Gram had not been anxious to marry her. She was no lady as far as language and manners went—but many pretty girls of the middle classes soon turned harsh and sour when they had been married some time and shut up in a home, with worries of housekeeping and servants to spoil their life.

“Mr. Gram asked me to go and see you and give you the latest news about him,” said Jenny. She felt she could not speak about him as Helge.

“I understand that he spent his time exclusively with you lately—he never mentioned anybody else in his letters. I thought he was in love with a Miss Jahrman at first.”

“Miss Jahrman is my friend—there were several of us always together at first, but she has been very busy lately working at a large picture.”

“Is she the daughter of Colonel Jahrman of Tegneby? Then I suppose she has money?”

“No; she is studying on a small inheritance from her mother. She is not on very good terms with her father—that is to say, he did not like her wanting to become an artist, so she refused to accept any help from him.”

“Very stupid of her. My daughter, Mrs. Arnesen, knows her slightly—she stayed with us at Christmas. She said there were other reasons why the Colonel did not want to have anything to do with her; she is said to be very good looking, but has a bad reputation.”

“There is not the least truth in it,” said Jenny stiffly.

“You have a good time, you artists.” Mrs. Gram sighed. “I cannot see how Helge could work at all—it seems to me he never wrote about anything else but going here and there in the Campagna with you.”

“Oh,” said Jenny. It was very painful to hear Mrs. Gram speak of things out there. “I think Mr. Gram worked very hard, and one must have a day off now and again.”

“Possibly—but we housewives must get along without it. Wait till you get married, Miss Winge. Everybody wants holidays, it seems to me. I have a niece who has just become a school teacher—she was to study medicine, but she was not strong enough, so had to give it up and begin at the seminary instead. She is always having a day off, it seems to me, and I tell her there is no danger of her being overworked.”

Mrs. Gram left the room, and Jenny rose to have a look at the pictures.

Above the sofa was a large view of the Campagna; one could easily see that Gram had studied in Copenhagen. The drawing was good and thorough, but the colouring thin and dry. The background with two Italian women in national dress and the miniature plants round the tumbled pillar was poor. The model study of a young girl below was better. She had to smile—no wonder Helge had found some difficulty in accepting Rome as it was, and had been disappointed at first, after having grown up with all this Italian romance on the walls at home.

There were several well-drawn small landscapes from Italy, with ruins and national costumes, and some copies—Correggio’s “DanaË” and Guido Reni’s “Aurora”—which were not good, and other copies of baroque pictures which she did not know, but a study of a priest was good.

There was also a large light green summer landscape—an experiment in impressionism—but thin and plain as far as colouring went. The one over the piano was better, the sun above the ridge and the air quite good. A portrait of Mrs. Gram hung beside it—very good indeed—better than any of the other things. The figure and the hands were perfectly drawn, the bright red dress, draped at the sides, the openwork black mittens, and the high black hat with a red wing were very effective; the pale face with the dark eyes below the curls on her forehead was good, but unfortunately she stood as glued on to the grey-blue background. The portrait of a child drew her attention—near the frame was written “Bamsey, four years old.” Was that pretty little frowning child in a white shirt Helge? How good he was!

Mrs. Gram returned with some cake and wine on a tray. Jenny muttered something about giving trouble:

“I have been looking at your husband’s paintings.”

“I don’t understand much about it, but I think they are beautiful. He says himself that they are no good, but it is only a way of talking, I think,” she said, with a short, harsh laugh. “My husband is pretty easy-going, you see, and painting pictures could not pay our way when we had married and had children, so he had to do something useful besides. But he was too lazy to paint as well, and that is why he pretended that he had no talent. To me his pictures are much prettier than all the modern paintings, but I suppose you think differently?”

“Your husband’s pictures are very pretty, especially your portrait, which I think beautiful.”

“Do you?—but it is not very like me, and certainly not flattering.” She laughed again, the same slightly bitter laugh. “I think he painted much better before he began to imitate those who were modern then—Thaulow and Krogh and others.”

Jenny sipped her wine in silence while Mrs. Gram went on talking.

“I should like to ask you to stay to lunch, Miss Winge, but I have to do everything myself, you see, and we were not prepared for your coming. I am sorry, but I hope you will come another time.”

Jenny understood that Mrs. Gram wished to get rid of her—it was quite natural, as she was without a servant and had to get the lunch—so she took her leave. On the stairs she met Mr. Gram—she thought so at least. As she passed him she had the impression that he looked very young and that his eyes were very blue.

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III

Two days later, in the afternoon, when Jenny was painting in her studio, Helge’s father called. As he stood with his hat in his hand, she saw that his hair was grey—so grey that she could not make out what the original colour had been, but he still looked young. He was thin, and had a slight stoop—not the stoop of an old man, but rather of one too slender for his height. His eyes too were young, though sad and tired and so big and blue that they gave one a curious impression of being wide open, surprised, and at the same time suspicious.

“I was very anxious to meet you, Jenny Winge,” he said, “as you can understand for yourself. No; don’t take off your overall, and tell me if I disturb you.”

“Not in the least,” said Jenny warmly. She liked his smile and his voice. She threw her overall on a chair: “The light is almost gone already. It was very good of you to come and see me.”

“It is a very long time since I was in a studio,” said Gram, sitting down on the sofa.

“Don’t you ever see any of the other painters—your contemporaries?” asked Jenny.

“No, never,” he answered curtly.

“But”—Jenny bethought herself—“how did you find your way up here? Did you ask them at home for my address, or at the artists’ club?”

Gram laughed.

“No; I met you on the stairs the other day, and yesterday, as I was going to the office, I saw you again. I followed you. I was half a mind to stop you and introduce myself. Then I saw you go in here, and I knew there were studios in this house, so I thought I would pay you a visit.”

“Do you know,” said Jenny, with a merry laugh, “Helge too followed me in the street—I was with a friend. He had lost his way in the old streets by the rag market, and he came and spoke to us. That is how we made his acquaintance. We thought it rather cool at the time, but it seems to run in the family.”

Gram frowned, and sat quiet an instant. Jenny realized that she had said the wrong thing, and was thinking what to say next.

“May I make you some tea?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer lit the spirit-lamp under the kettle.

“Miss Winge, you must not be afraid that Helge is like me in other things. I don’t think he takes after his father in anything—fortunately.” He laughed. Jenny did not know what to say to this, and busied herself with the tea.

“It’s rather bare in here, as you see, but I live at home with my mother.”

“I see. This is a good studio, is it not?”

“I think so.”

After a moment he said: “I have been thinking of you very much lately, Miss Winge—I understood from my son’s letters that you and he....”

“Yes, Helge and I are very fond of each other,” said Jenny, looking straight at him. He took her hand and held it an instant.

“I know my son so little—his real self is almost unknown to me, but as you are fond of him you must know him far better. I have always believed that he was a good boy, and clever in a way, and the fact that you love him proves to me that I have reason to be pleased—and proud of him. Now that I know you, I can understand that he loves you, and I hope he will make you happy.”

“Thank you,” said Jenny, giving him her hand again.

“I am fond of the boy—he’s my only son—and I think he likes me too.”

“I know he does. Helge is very fond of you and of his mother.” She blushed as if she had been tactless.

“Yes, I believe so; but he must have seen long ago that his father and mother did not care for one another. Helge has not had a happy home, Jenny. I don’t mind telling you this, for if you have not already understood it, you will soon see it for yourself. You are a sensible girl. Helge’s experience of his own home will teach him, perhaps, to value your love and try to keep it.”

Jenny poured out the tea: “Helge used to come and have tea with me in the afternoon in Rome—it was really during these visits we learnt to know each other, I think.”

“And you became fond of each other?”

“No, not at once. Perhaps we were, though—even then—but we believed that we were great friends only. He came to tea afterwards too, of course.” They both smiled.

“Tell me something about Helge from the time he was a boy—when he was quite small, I mean.”

Gram smiled sadly and shook his head: “No; I cannot tell you anything about my son. He was always good and obedient, and did well at school. He was not particularly clever, but he worked steadily and diligently. He was very reserved as a boy—and later, too, for that matter—with me, anyhow. You, I am sure, have more to tell me.”

“About what?”

“About Helge, of course. Tell me what he looks like to the girl who loves him. You are no ordinary girl either—you are an artist—and I believe you are intelligent and good. Will you not tell me how you came to like him—what it was that made you choose him?”

“Well,” she said laughingly—“it is not so easy to say—we just got fond of each other.”

He laughed too. “Well, it was a stupid question, I admit. One would say I had quite forgotten what it was to be young and in love, don’t you think?”

“Don’t you think!—Helge says that so often, too. It was one of the things that made me like him. He was so young. I saw that he was very reserved, but gradually thawed a good deal.”

“I can understand he would—to you. Tell me more! Oh, but don’t look so frightened. I don’t mean that you should tell me the whole story. Only tell me something about yourself and about Helge, about your work—and about Rome. I am an old man. I want to feel again what it is like to be an artist—and free. To work at the only thing you care for—to be young—and in love—and happy.”

He stayed for two hours. When he was ready to go and stood with his hat in his hand, he said in a low voice: “It is no use trying to hide from you the state of things at home. When we meet there, it would be better if we pretended not to have met before. I don’t wish Helge’s mother to know that I have made your acquaintance in this way—for your sake, so as not to expose you to any disagreeable, malicious words from her. It is enough for her to know that I like somebody—especially if it is a woman—to turn her against them. You think it strange, I am sure, but you understand, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Jenny quietly.

“Good-bye. I am happy about you for Helge’s sake—believe me, Jenny.”

She had written to Helge the night before about her visit to his home, and when she read her letter through, she realized how very cold and poor was the part about her meeting with his mother. When writing to him that night she told him about his father’s visit, but she tore the letter up and began another. It was so difficult to tell him about his father’s call and not to mention hers to Mrs. Gram. She did not like having secrets with one from the other. She felt humiliated on Helge’s behalf at having been initiated all at once in the misery of his home, and she ended by not saying a word about it in her letter—it would be easier to explain when he came.

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IV

Towards the end of May Jenny had not heard from Helge for several days, and was beginning to fear that something had happened. If no letter came the next day she would send a wire. In the afternoon, when she was in her studio, there was a knock at the door. When she opened she was seized and hugged and kissed by a man who stood on the landing.

“Helge!” She was overjoyed. “Helge! how you frightened me, you dear boy. Let me look at you. Is it really and truly you?” and she pulled the travelling-cap off his head.

“I hope it could not be anybody else,” he said laughingly.

“But what does all this mean?”

“I will tell you,” he said, pressing his face against her neck. “I wanted to give you a surprise, and so I did, it seems.”

After the first tender greetings were over they sat down hand in hand on the sofa.

“Let me look at you, Jenny—oh, how lovely you are! At home they believe I am in Berlin. I am going to an hotel for the night. I mean to stay a few days in town before telling them. Won’t it be fun! It is a pity you live at home now. We could have been together all day.”

“When you knocked I thought it was your father coming.”

“Father?”

“Yes.” She felt a little embarrassed; it seemed suddenly so difficult to explain the whole thing to him. “You see, your father came one day to call, and he has been to tea sometimes in the afternoon. We sit and talk about you.”

“But, Jenny, you never wrote a word about it; you have not even mentioned that you had met father.”

“No; I preferred to tell you. You see, your mother does not know about it; your father thought it better not to mention it.”

“Not to me?”

“Oh no, we never meant that. He believes most likely that I have told you. It was only your mother who was not to know. I thought it was—well, I did not like to write you that I had a secret from your mother. You understand?”

Helge was silent.

“I did not like it myself,” she continued. “But what could I do? He called on me, you see, and I like him very much. I am getting quite fond of your father.”

“Father can be very attractive, I know—and then you are an artist, too.”

“He likes me for your sake, dear. I know it is so.”

Helge did not answer.

“And you have only seen mother once?”

“Yes—but are you not hungry? Let me give you something to eat.”

“No, thanks. We’ll go out and have supper somewhere together.”

There was a knock at the door again. “It is your father,” whispered Jenny.

“Hush—sit still—don’t open!”

They heard retreating steps on the landing. Helge frowned.

“What is it, dear?”

“Oh, I don’t know—I hope we won’t see him. We don’t wish to be disturbed, do we? Not to see anybody.”

“No,” she kissed his mouth, and, bending his head, she kissed him again on the neck behind the ear.

After dinner, when they were having coffee and liqueurs, Jenny said suddenly: “I cannot get over this about Francesca.”

“Did you not know before? I thought she had written to you.”

Jenny shook her head.

“Never a word—you could have knocked me down with a feather when I got her letter. Only a few words: ‘Tomorrow I am going to marry Ahlin.’ I had not the least suspicion of it.”

“Neither had we. They were very much together, of course, but that they were going to marry even Heggen did not know until she asked him to give her away.”

“Have you seen them since?”

“No. They went to Rocca di Papa the same day, and they were still there when I left Rome.”

Jenny sat a while thinking.

“I thought she was all taken up with her work,” she said.

“Heggen told me she had finished the big picture of the gate, and that it was very good. She had begun several small ones too, but then she got married all of a sudden. I don’t know if they had been properly engaged even. And what about you, Jenny—you wrote you had begun a new picture?”

Jenny led him to the easel. The big canvas showed a street with a row of houses—offices and factories—in grey-green and brick-red colouring. To the right were some workshops; behind them rose the walls of some big houses against a rich blue sky, with a few departing rain clouds, leaden grey in colour, but shining white where the sun came through. There was a strong light on the shops and the wall, and on the young foliage of some trees in a yard. A few men, some wagons and fruit barrows stood about in the street.

“I don’t know much about it, but is it not very good? I think it is fine—it is beautiful.”

“When I was wandering about waiting for my own boy—after walking here so lonely and sad many a spring before—and saw the maples and the chestnuts opening out their tender leaves against the smoky houses and red walls under a golden spring sky, I wanted to paint it.”

“Where did you get the view?”

“Stenersgaten. You see, your father spoke about a picture of you as a boy, which he kept in his office. I went down there to have a look at it, and then I saw this view from his office window. They let me stand in the box factory next door to paint it, but I had to change it a bit—compose a little.”

“You have been a good deal with father, I see,” said Helge after a pause. “I suppose he is very interested in your picture?”

“Yes. He often came over to look while I was working on it, and gave me some good advice. He knows a lot about painting, of course.”

“Do you think father had any talent?” asked Helge.

“Oh yes, I believe so. The pictures hanging in your home are not particularly good, but he let me see some studies he keeps in his office, and I think they show a refined and quite original talent. He would never have been a great artist; he is too susceptible to influence, but I think it is because of his readiness to appreciate and love the good work of others. He has a great understanding and love of art.”

“Poor father!” said Helge.

“Yes”—Jenny nestled closer to him—“your father is perhaps more to be pitied than you or I understand.”

They kissed—and forgot to speak any more of Gert Gram.

“Your people don’t know about it yet?” Helge asked.

“No,” said Jenny.

“At first, when I was sending all my letters to your home address, did your mother never ask who wrote to you like that every day?”

“No. My mother is not that kind.”

“My mother,” repeated Helge hotly. “You mean to say that mother would have done so—that she is tactless. I don’t think you are just to my mother—surely, for my sake, you ought not to speak like that of her.”

“Helge! What do you mean?” Jenny looked at him, astonished. “I have not said a word about your mother.”

“You said, my mother is not like that.”

“I did not. I said my mother.”

“No; you said my mother. You may not like her—although I cannot see what reason you have so far not to—but you should remember that you speak about my mother, and that I am fond of her as she is.”

“Oh, Helge! I don’t understand how....” She stopped, as she felt tears filling her eyes. It was so strange a thing for Jenny Winge to shed tears that she felt ashamed of it, and was quiet.

But he had seen it: “Jenny, my darling, have I hurt you? Oh, my own girl—what a misery it is! You can see for yourself—no sooner have I come back, but it begins again.” He clenched his hands and cried: “I hate it—I hate my home!”

“My darling boy, you must not say so. Don’t let it upset you like that.” She took him in her arms. “Helge, dearest, listen to me—what has it to do with us?—it cannot make any difference in us”—and she kissed and petted him till he stopped crying and shivering.

---

V

Jenny and Helge were sitting on the sofa in his room, silent, with arms encircled. It was a Sunday in June; Jenny had been for a walk with Helge in the morning and had dined at the Grams’. After dinner they all sat in the drawing-room, struggling through the tedious afternoon, until Helge got Jenny into his own room on the pretext of reading her something he had written.

“Ugh!” said Jenny at last.

Helge did not ask why she said it. He only laid his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair; neither spoke.

Helge sighed: “It was nicer at your place in the Via Vantaggio, was it not?”

The sound of plates and of fat spluttering in a pan came from the kitchen. Mrs. Gram was getting supper. Jenny opened the window wide to let out the smell that had penetrated into the room. She stood a moment looking out on the yard. All the windows were kitchen or bedroom windows with blinds half drawn, except one large one in each corner. Ugh! How well she knew those dining-rooms with a single corner window looking on to the yard, dark and dismal, with never a glimpse of sun. Soot came in when one aired the rooms, and the smell of food was permanent. The playing of a guitar came from a servant’s room, and a high soprano voice was singing a doleful Salvation Army hymn.

The guitar reminded her of Via Vantaggio, and Cesca, and Gunnar, who used to sit on her sofa with his legs on a stool, strumming on Cesca’s guitar and singing Cesca’s Italian songs. And she was seized with a sudden, desperate longing for everything out there. Helge came to her side: “What are you thinking of?”

“Of Via Vantaggio.”

“Oh yes. What a lovely time we had there!”

She put her arm round his neck and drew his head on to her shoulder. It had struck her the moment he spoke that he was not a part of that which filled her heart with longing. She raised his head again and looked into his amber brown eyes, wishing to be reminded of all the glorious days in the Campagna, when he lay among the daisies looking at her. And she wanted to shake off the intense, sickening feeling of discomfort which always came over her when she was in his home.

Everything was unbearable here. The first evening she was invited to the house after Helge’s official arrival, when Mrs. Gram had introduced her to her husband, she had to pretend not to know him, while Helge stood looking on at this comedy, knowing they had deceived his mother. It was dreadful—but something still worse had happened. She had been left alone with Gram for a few minutes and he mentioned that he had been to the studio to see her one afternoon, but she had not been in. “No, I was not at the studio that day,” she had answered, turning very red. He looked at her in great surprise, and almost without knowing why she did so she blurted out: “I was, but I could not let you in, because there was somebody with me.” Gram had smiled and said: “Yes, I heard quite distinctly that somebody was moving in the studio.” In her confusion she had told him that it was Helge, and that he had been a few days in town incognito.

“My dear Jenny,” Gram had said, and she saw that he was hurt, “you need not have kept it secret from me. I would certainly not have intruded on you—but I will say that it would have given me much pleasure if Helge had told me.” She found nothing to say, and he continued: “I shall be careful not to tell him.”

She had never meant to keep it a secret from Helge that she had told his father, but she had not yet been able to tell him—afraid that he would not like it. She was worried and nervous about all these mysteries, one after the other.

It is true, she had not told them anything at home either, but that was quite different. She was not used to speak to her mother about anything concerning herself; she had never expected any understanding from her, and had never asked for it. Her mother, besides, was very anxious about Ingeborg just at present. Jenny had got her to rent a cottage a little way out of town; Bodil and Nils came to school by train every day, and Jenny lived in the studio.

Yet she had never been so fond of her mother and her home as she was now. Once or twice when she had been worried about things, and out of spirits, her mother had tried to help and comfort her without asking any questions. She would have blushed at the mere thought of forcing herself into the confidence of any of her children. To grow up in a home like Helge’s must have been a torture. It seemed almost as if the gloom of it hung about them even when they were together elsewhere.

“Dearest,” she said, caressing him.

Jenny had offered to help Mrs. Gram wash up and to get the supper, but she had said, with her usual smile: “No, my dear, you have not come here for that—certainly not, Miss Winge.”

Perhaps she did not mean it, but Mrs. Gram always smiled in a spiteful way when she talked to her. Poor woman, it was probably the only smile she had.

Gram came in; he had been for a walk. Jenny and Helge went to sit with him in his study. Mrs. Gram came in for an instant.

“You forgot to take your umbrella, dear—as usual. You were lucky to escape a shower. Men want such a lot of looking after, you know,” she said, turning to Miss Winge.

“You manage it very well,” said Gram. His voice and manners were always painfully polite when he spoke to his wife.

“You are sitting in here too, I see,” she said to Helge and Jenny.

“I have noticed that the study is the nicest room in every house,” said Jenny. “It was in our house, when my father was alive. I suppose it is because they are made to work in it.”

“The kitchen ought in that case to be the very nicest room in every house,” said Mrs. Gram. “Where do you think more work is done, Gert—in your room or mine?—for I suppose the kitchen is my study.”

“Undoubtedly more useful work is done in your room.”

“I believe, after all, that I must accept your kind offer of help, Miss Winge—it is getting late.”

They were at table when the bell rang. It was Mrs. Gram’s niece, Aagot Sand. Mrs. Gram introduced Jenny.

“Oh, you are the artist with whom Helge spent so much of his time in Rome. I guessed that much when I saw you in Stenersgaten one day in the spring. You were walking with Uncle Gert, and carried your painting things.”

“You must be mistaken, Aagot,” said Mrs. Gram. “When do you imagine you saw them?”

“The day before Intercession Day, as I was coming back from school.”

“It is quite true,” said Gram. “Miss Winge had dropped her paint-box in the street, and I helped her to pick the things up.”

“A little adventure, I see, which you have not confessed to your wife,” said Mrs. Gram, laughing. “I had no idea you knew each other before.”

Gram laughed too: “Miss Winge did not recognize me. It was not very flattering to me—but I did not wish to remind her. Did you not suspect when you saw me that I was the kind old gentleman who had helped you?”

“I was not sure,” said Jenny feebly, her face turning purple. “I did not think you recognized me.” She tried to smile, but she was painfully conscious of her blushing and unsteady voice.

“It was an adventure, indeed,” said Mrs. Gram. “A most peculiar coincidence.”

“Have I said something wrong again?” asked Aagot when they went into the drawing-room after supper. Mr. Gram had retired to his study and Mrs. Gram had gone into the kitchen. “It is detestable in this house. You never know when there’s going to be an explosion. Please explain. I don’t understand anything.”

“Mind your own business,” said Helge angrily.

“All right, all right—don’t bite me! Is Aunt Rebecca jealous of Miss Winge now?”

“You are the most tactless woman....”

“After your mother, yes. Uncle Gert told me so one day.” She laughed. “Have you ever heard anything so absurd! Jealous of Miss Winge.” She looked inquisitively at the two others.

“You need not bother about things that only concern us, Aagot,” said Helge curtly.

“Indeed? I only thought—but never mind; it does not matter.”

“No; it does not in the least.”

Mrs. Gram came in and lit the lamp. Jenny looked almost scared at her angry face. She stood a moment, staring with hard, glittering eyes, then she bent down and picked up Jenny’s scissors, which had fallen on the floor.

“It looks as if it were a speciality of yours to drop things. You should not let things slip through your fingers, Miss Winge. Helge is not as gallant as his father, it seems.” She laughed. “Do you want your lamp?...” She went into the study and pulled the door after her. Helge listened an instant—his mother spoke in a low but angry voice in the other room.

“Can’t you leave that wretched business alone for once?” came distinctly through the door; it was Gram speaking.

Jenny turned to Helge: “I am going home now—I have a headache.”

“Don’t go, Jenny. There will be such a scene if you go. Stay a little longer. Mother will only be more angry if you run away now.”

“I cannot stand it,” she whispered, nearly crying.

Mrs. Gram walked through the room. Gram came in and joined them.

“Jenny is tired; she is going now. I will see her home.”

“Are you going already? Can’t you stay a little longer?”

“I have a headache and I am tired,” murmured Jenny.

“Please stay a little,” he whispered to her. “She”—he indicated the kitchen with his head—“does not say anything to you, and while you are here we are spared a scene.”

Jenny sat down quietly and took up her needlework again. Aagot crocheted energetically at a hospital shawl.

Gram went to the piano. Jenny was not musical, but she understood that he was, and by and by she became calm as he played softly—all for her, she felt.

“Do you know this one, Miss Winge?”

“No.”

“Nor you either, Helge? Did you not hear it in Rome? In my time it was sung everywhere. I have some books with Italian songs.”

He rose to look for them; as he passed Jenny he whispered: “Do you like me to play?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I go on?”

“Yes, please.”

He stroked her hand: “Poor little Jenny. You had better go now—before she comes.”

Mrs. Gram brought a tray of cakes and dessert.

“How nice of you to play to us, Gert. Don’t you think my husband plays beautifully, Miss Winge? Has he played to you before?” she asked innocently.

Jenny shook her head: “I did not know that Mr. Gram played the piano.”

“What a beautiful worker you are.” She looked at Jenny’s embroidery. “I thought you artists did not condescend to do needlework. It is a lovely pattern—where did you get it? Abroad, I suppose?”

“I designed it myself.”

“Oh well, then it is easy to get nice patterns. Have you seen this, Aagot? Isn’t it pretty? You are very clever”—and she patted Jenny’s hand.

What loathsome hands she had, thought Jenny—small, short fingers, with nails broader than long, and splayed out wide.

Helge and Jenny saw Aagot to her rooms and walked slowly down Pilestaedet in the pale night of June. The chestnuts in bloom along the hospital wall smelt strongly after the afternoon shower.

“Helge,” said Jenny, “you must try and arrange so that we need not go with them the day after tomorrow.”

“It is impossible. They have asked you and you have accepted. It is for your sake they have arranged this picnic.”

“But can you not understand how miserable it will be? I wish we could go alone somewhere, you and I, as in Rome.”

“There is nothing I would like better, but if we refuse to be a party to their midsummer outing it will only make things more unpleasant at home.”

“Not more than usual, I suppose,” she said scornfully.

“Yes, much more. Can you not put up with it for my sake? Hang it all, you are not obliged to be in the midst of it always, or to live and work there!”

He was right, she thought, and reproached herself for not being patient enough. He, poor boy, had to live and work in a home she could scarcely endure for two hours. He had grown up in it and lived his whole youth in it.

“I am horrid and selfish, Helge.” She clung to him, tired, worried, and humiliated. She longed for him to kiss her and comfort her. What did it really matter to them? They had each other, and belonged somewhere far away from the air of hatred, suspicion, and anger in his home.

The scent of jessamine was wafted from the old gardens that still remained.

“We can go off by ourselves another day—just you and I,” he said, to comfort her. “But how could you be so silly?” he said suddenly. “I cannot understand it. You ought to have known that mother would get to know it—as sure as anything.”

“Of course she does not believe the story your father told,” said Jenny timidly.—Helge sniffed.—“I wish he would tell her everything just as it happened.”

“You may rest assured he won’t do that. And you cannot do it—you must just go on pretending. It was awfully stupid of you.”

“I could not help it, Helge.”

“Well—I had told you enough about things at home for you to know. You could have prevented father from coming again, and all your visits to the office—as well as the meetings in Stenersgate.”

“Meetings?—I saw the view and knew I could make a good picture of it—and so I have.”

“Yes, yes, you have. The fault, no doubt, is mostly father’s. Oh, the way he speaks of her.” Helge fumed. “You heard what he had said to Aagot—and what he said to you tonight. ‘She’”—imitating his father—“does not say anything to you! Remember it is our mother he speaks of like that.”

“I think your father is much more considerate and courteous to your mother than she is to him.”

“That consideration of father’s—I know it. Do you call it considerate the way he has won you over to his side? And his politeness—if you knew how I have suffered under it as a child, and since. He used to stand and listen very politely without saying a word, and if he spoke, it was in an icy cold, extremely civil manner. I almost prefer mother’s loud anger and scoldings. Oh, Jenny, it is all so miserable.”

“My poor, darling boy.”

“It is not all mother’s fault. Everybody prefers father. You do—quite naturally—I do myself, but I understand her being as she is. She wants to be first with everybody, and she never is. Poor mother.”

“I am sorry for her,” said Jenny, but her heart remained cold to Mrs. Gram. The air was heavy with scent from leaf and blossom as they went through the square. On the seats under the trees there was whispering and murmuring in the clear summer night.

Their solitary steps echoed on the pavement of the deserted business quarter where the tall buildings slept—the pale blue sky was reflected in the shop windows.

“May I come up?” he whispered as they stood at her entrance.

“I am tired,” said Jenny softly.

“I should like to stay a while with you—don’t you think it would be nice to be by ourselves a little?”

She said nothing, but began to walk up the stairs, and he followed.

Jenny lighted the seven-armed candlestick on her writing-table, took a cigarette, and held it to the flame: “Will you smoke?”

“Thanks.” He took the cigarette from her lips.

“The thing is, you see,” he said suddenly, “that there was once some story about father and another woman. I was twelve then, and I don’t know exactly how much truth there was in it. But mother!... it was a dreadful time. It was only because of us that they remained together—father told me so himself. God knows, I don’t thank him for it! Mother is honest at least, and admits that she means to hold on to him by hook or by crook and not let go.”

He sat down on the sofa. Jenny went and sat beside him, kissing his eyes. He sank on his knees and laid his head in her lap.

“Do you remember the last evening in Rome, when I said good-night? Do you still love me as you did then?”

She did not answer.

“Jenny?”

“We have not been happy together today—it’s the first time.”

He lifted his head: “Are you vexed with me?” he said in a low voice.

“No, not vexed.”

“What, then?”

“Nothing—only....”

“Only what?”

“Tonight”—she hesitated—“when we walked here, you said we would go somewhere alone—some other day. It was not as it was in Rome; now it is you who decide what I must do and not do.”

“Oh no, Jenny.”

“Yes—but I don’t mind; I like it so. I only think that, if such is the case, you ought to help me out of all this trouble.”

“You don’t think I did help you today?” he asked slowly.

“Ye—s. Well, I suppose there was nothing you could do.”

“Shall I go now?” he whispered after a pause, drawing her close to him.

“Do as you wish,” she said quietly.

“You know what I wish. What do you wish—most?”

“I don’t know what I want.” She burst into tears.

“Oh, Jenny darling.” He kissed her softly time after time. When she recovered herself he took her hand: “I am going now. Sleep well, dear; you are tired. You must not be cross with me.”

“Say good-night nicely to me,” she said, clinging to him.

“Good-night, my sweet, beloved Jenny.” He left, and she fell to crying again.

---

“These are the things I wanted you to see,” said Gert Gram, rising. He had been on his knees, looking for something on the lower shelf of his safe.

Jenny pushed the sketch-books aside and pulled the electric lamp nearer. He wiped the dust from the big portfolio and placed it before her.

“I have not shown these to anybody for a great many years, or looked at them myself, but I have been wanting you to see them for some time—in fact, from the day I called on you at your studio. When you came here to look at Helge’s picture I meant to ask you if you cared to see them, and all the time you were working close by here I had it in my mind.

“It is strange to think, Jenny, that here in this little office I have buried all my dreams of youth. There in the safe they lie like corpses in their tomb, and I myself go about a dead and forgotten artist.”

Jenny said nothing. Gram sometimes used expressions that were rather too sentimental, she thought, although she knew that the bitter feelings which dictated them were real enough. In a sudden impulse she bent forward and stroked his grey hair.

Gram bowed his head as if to prolong the slight caress—and without looking at her, untied the portfolio with trembling hands.

She realized in surprise that her own hands shook as she took the first sheet from him, and she felt a strange fear and oppression at heart, as of a danger threatening. She was suddenly afraid when she realized that she did not want anybody to know of her visit and that she dared not tell Helge about it. At the mere thought of her lover she became depressed; she had long since consciously stopped analysing her real feelings for him. She did not want to heed the foreboding that crossed her mind at this moment, not to let herself be disturbed by inquiring into Gert Gram’s feelings for her.

She turned over the sheets of the portfolio with the dreams of his youth; it was a melancholy business. He had told her about this work often when they were alone, and she understood that he thought he had been born an artist for the sake of this and nothing else. The pictures hanging in his home he called the amateur work of a conscientious and diligent pupil, but these—they were his own. They were illustrations to Landstad’s Folksongs.

At first sight these big sheets with frames of Roman foliage and ornate black-letter writing were good enough. The colouring was pure and effective in most of them, in some really fine, but the figures in the vignettes and borders were without style and life, although the miniature drawings were correct in every detail. Some of them were naturalistic, others approaching Italian mediaeval art to such an extent that Jenny recognized certain Annunciation angels and madonnas in the cloaks of knights and maidens, and the leaves in gold and purple she remembered having seen, in a book of mass in the San Marco library. The words of the songs looked very strange, hand-printed in elegant monastic Latin types. In some of the larger full-page illustrations the composition was baroque, a direct copy of Roman altar pictures. It was an echo of all he had seen and lived among and loved—an echo of the melody of Gert Gram’s youth; not a single note was his own, but this melody of many notes was resounded in a particularly soft, melancholy tone.

“You don’t quite like them,” he said. “I can see you don’t.”

“Yes, I like them. There is much that is pretty and delicate about them, but, you know”—she searched for the right expression—“the effect is a little strange on us, who have seen the same subjects treated differently and so perfectly, that we cannot conceive them treated in another way.”

He sat opposite her, resting his chin in his hand. By and by he looked up, and she was sad at heart to meet his eyes.

“I seem to remember them as being much better than they are,” he said quietly, trying to smile. “I have not opened this portfolio for many a year, as I told you.”

“I have never quite understood that you were so attracted by the later renaissance and the baroque,” she said, to divert the conversation.

“I am not surprised, Jenny dear, that you don’t understand it.” He looked into her face with a melancholy smile. “There was a time when I believed in myself as an artist, but not so completely that I did not have a slight doubt sometimes, not of succeeding to express what I wanted, but as to what I really wanted to express. I saw that romantic art had had its day and was on the decline—there was decadence and falsehood all along—and yet in my heart I was devoted to romance, not in painting alone, but in real life. I wanted the Sunday-peasants of romance, although I had lived long enough in the country as a boy to know they did not exist, and when I went abroad it was to the Italy of romance I turned my steps. I know that you and your contemporaries seek beauty in things as they are, tangible and real. To me there was beauty only in the transformation of reality, which had already been done by others. In the eighties there came a new art-creed. I tried to adopt it, but the result was lip-service only, for my heart rebelled against it.”

“But reality, Gert, is not a fixed conception. It appears different to every one who sees it. An English painter once said to me: ‘There is beauty in everything; only your eyes see it or do not see it.’”

“I was not made to conceive reality, only the reflection of it in the dreams of others. I lacked entirely the capacity to form a beauty for myself out of the complexity of realities; I knew my own ineffectiveness. When I came to Italy the baroque took my heart and fancy. Can you not understand the agony of my soul on realizing my inefficiency? To have nothing new or personal wherewith to fill up form, only develop the technique in soaring fancies, break-neck foreshortenings, powerful effects of light and shade, and cunningly thought-out compositions. The emptiness of it all is to be hidden under the ecstasy—contorted faces, twisted limbs, saints, whose only true passion is the dread of their own engulfing doubt, which they try to drown in sickly exaltation. It is the despair of the good, the work of an epigon school wishing to fascinate—mostly themselves.”

Jenny nodded. “What you say, Gert, is at least your own subjective view. I am not so sure that the painters you speak of were not highly pleased with themselves.”

He laughed and said: “Perhaps they were—and perhaps this is my hobby-horse because for once I had—as you say—a subjective view.”

“But the picture of your wife in red is impressionistic, excellent. The more I look at it, the more I like it.”

“Yes, but that is a solitary instance.” After a pause “When I painted it, she was all the world to me. I was very much in love with her—and I hated her intensely already.”

“Was it because of her you gave up painting?” asked Jenny.

“No. All our misfortunes are of our own making. I know you have not what they call faith, neither have I—but I believe in a God, if you like, or a spiritual power which punishes justly.

“She was cashier in a shop in the High Street; I happened to see her there. She was remarkably pretty, as you can see still. One evening when she went home I waited for her and spoke to her. We made friends—and I seduced her,” he said in a low and harsh voice.

“And you married her because she was going to have a child?—I thought so. For twenty-seven years she has tormented you in return. Do you know what I think of the deity you believe in?—that it is rather relentless.”

He smiled wearily. “I am not quite so old-fashioned as you may think. I don’t consider it a sin if two young people, who love and believe in one another, join their lives in a lawful or unlawful way. But in my case I was the abductor. She was innocent when I met her—innocent in every way. I understood her better than she did herself. I saw that she was passionate, and would be jealous and tyrannical in her love, but I did not care. I was flattered that her passion was for me, that this beautiful girl was all mine, but I never meant to be hers alone, the way I knew she wanted it. I did not exactly mean to leave her, but I thought I should be able to arrange our life in such a way as not to share with her my interests, my work, my real life in fact, as I knew she would want to do. It was stupid of me, knowing that I was weak and she strong and ruthless. I thought that her great passion would give me, who was comparatively cold, a hold on her.

“Beyond her great faculty of loving there was nothing in her. She was vain and uneducated, envious and crude. There could be no mental fellowship between us, but I did not miss it; to possess her beauty and her passionate love was all I cared for.”

He rose and went over to the side where Jenny was sitting. He took both her hands and pressed them against his eyes.

“What else but misery could I expect from a marriage with her? But we reap as we sow, and I had to marry her. I had a dreadful time of it. At first, when she came to my studio, she was proud to be my mistress, arrogant in her denunciation of old prejudices, declaring that the only life worth living was that of free love. The moment things went wrong she changed her tone. Then it was all about her respectable family in Frederikshald, her unstained virtue, and her good reputation. Many men had wanted her, but she had not listened to anybody, and I was a scoundrel and a wretch if I did not marry her at once. I had nothing to marry on; I had neglected my studies and had learnt nothing but painting. Some months went by—at last I had to apply to my father. My people helped me through. We got married, and two months later Helge arrived.

“I had had hopes of a great artistic work—my folklore illustrations—but I had to give up my dreams for the reality of making bread and butter. Once I had to come to an agreement with my creditors. She took her share of the struggle and poverty loyally and without complaint—she would willingly have starved for me and the children. Feeling as I did towards her, it was hard to accept what she gave in working, suffering, and renouncing for my sake.

“I had to sacrifice everything I loved; she forced me to give it up inch by inch. From the very first she and my father were mortal enemies. He could not bear his daughter-in-law, and that was a blow to her vanity, so she set about to make trouble between him and me. My father was an official of the old school—a bit narrow and stiff maybe, but right-minded and loyal, noble and good at heart. You would have liked him, I am sure. We had been so much to one another, but our intimacy was put a stop to.

“As for my painting, I understood that I had not the talent I once had imagined, and I lacked energy to make continued efforts when I did not believe in myself—dead tired as I was of the struggle and of my life at her side, which became more and more of a caricature. She reproached me, but secretly she triumphed.

“She was jealous of the children too, if I was fond of them or they were fond of me. She would not share them with me nor me with them.

“Her jealousy has grown into a kind of madness as the years have gone by. You have seen it for yourself. She can scarcely bear to see me in the same room with you even when Helge is there.”

Jenny went to him and laid her hands on his shoulders:

“I cannot understand,” she said—“I really cannot—that you have been able to stand such a life.”

Gert Gram bent forward, resting his head on her shoulder:

“I don’t understand it myself.”

When he raised his head and their eyes met, she put her hand to his neck and, overwhelmed by a tender compassion, kissed him on the cheek and forehead.

She felt a sudden fear when she looked down at his face resting on her shoulder, with eyes closed, but the next moment he lifted his head and rose, saying:

“Thank you, Jenny dear.”

Gram put the drawings back in their cover and straightened the table.

“I hope you will be very, very happy. You are so bright and courageous, so energetic and gifted. Dear child, you are everything I wanted to be, but never was.” He spoke in a low, absent-minded voice.

“I think,” he said a moment later, “that when relations between two people are new, before their life is perfectly accorded, there are many small difficulties to overcome. I wish you could live elsewhere, not in this town. You should be alone, far from your own people—at first at least.”

“Helge has applied for a post in Bergen, as you know,” said Jenny, and the feeling of despair and anguish again seized her when she thought of him.

“Do you never speak to your mother about it? Why don’t you? Are you not fond of your mother?”

“Of course I am fond of her.”

“I should think it would be a good thing to talk to her about it—get her advice.”

“It is no good asking anybody’s advice—I don’t like to speak to any one about these things,” she said, wishing to dismiss the subject.

“No, you are perhaps....” He had been standing half-way turned to the window. Suddenly his face changed, and he whispered in a state of excitement:

“Jenny, she is down there in the street!”

“Who?”

“She—Rebecca!”

Jenny rose. She felt she could have screamed with exasperation and disgust. She trembled; every fibre of her body was quivering with revolt. She would not be involved in all this—these wicked, odious suspicions, quarrels, spiteful words, and scenes—no, she would not.

“Jenny, my child, you are shivering—don’t be afraid. I won’t let her hurt you.”

“Afraid? Far from it.” She steeled herself at once. “I have been here to fetch you; we have looked at your drawings, and we are now going to your house to supper.”

“She may not have noticed anything.”

“Heavens! we have nothing to hide. If she had not seen that I am here she will soon get to know it. I am going with you; we must do it for your sake as well as for mine—do you hear?”

Gram looked at her: “Yes, let us go, then.”

When they got down in the street Mrs. Gram was gone.

“Let us take the tram, Gert; it is late,” she said, adding in a sudden temper: “Oh, we must stop all this—if only for Helge’s sake.”

Mrs. Gram opened the door. Gert Gram ventured an explanation; Jenny looked frankly into the angry eyes of his wife: “I am sorry Helge is out for the evening. Do you think he will be home early?”

“I am surprised you did not remember it,” Mrs. Gram said to her husband. “It is no pleasure to Miss Winge to sit here with us two old people.”

“Oh, that is all right,” said Jenny.

“I don’t remember hearing that Helge was going out this evening,” said Gram.

“Fancy your coming without any needlework,” said Mrs. Gram, when they were sitting in the drawing-room after supper. “You are always so industrious.”

“I left the studio so late, I had no time to go home in between. Perhaps you could find me something?”

Jenny conversed with Mrs. Gram about the price of embroidery patterns at home and in Paris, and about books she had lent her. Gram was reading. Now and again she felt his eyes on her. Helge returned about eleven.

“What is the matter?” he asked, when they walked down the stairs. “Has there been a scene again?”

“No, not at all,” she replied, in a short, irritated voice. “I suppose your mother did not like my coming home with your father.”

“It seems to me, too, that you need not have done it,” said Helge humbly.

“I am going home by tram.” Overwrought, and unable to control herself, she pulled her arm out of his. “I cannot stand any more tonight, and I will not have these scenes with you every time I have been to your home. Good-night.”

“Jenny! Wait! Jenny!...” He hurried after her, but she was already at the stop when the tram came, and got in, leaving him without a word.

---

VII

Jenny walked listlessly about in her studio next morning and could not settle down to anything. The pouring rain was beating against the big window. She stopped to look at the wet tiles of the roofs, the black chimneys, and the telephone wires, along which the small raindrops were rolling down like pearls until they gathered into one large one and fell off, to be replaced immediately by others.

She might go to her mother and the children in the country for a few days. She must go away from all this. Or she might go to an hotel in some other town and write for Helge to come and talk things over with her quietly. If they could only be together again—they two alone! She tried to think of their spring in Rome, of the silvery haze over the mountains, and of her own happiness in it all. But she could not reconstruct the picture of Helge from that time—as he had appeared to her enamoured eyes.

Those days seemed already so far away; they were an isolated episode in her life, and although she knew they were a reality she could not connect them with her present existence.

Helge—her Helge was lost to her in the home at Welhavensgaten, and she herself could not fit in there. It seemed unthinkable that she should have anything to do with those people now and in all the time to come. Yes—Gram was right—they must go away.

And she would go at once—before Helge came, asking for an explanation of her behaviour yesterday. She packed a bag, and as she was putting on her mackintosh somebody knocked at the door—again and again—she knew it was Helge. She stood absolutely still and waited till he had gone. After a while she took her bag, locked the studio, and went. Half-way down the stairs she saw a man sitting in one of the windows. It was Helge. He had seen her too, so she went down to him. They looked at each other in silence.

“Why did you not open just now?” he asked.

Jenny did not answer.

“Did you not hear me knocking?” He looked at her bag: “Are you going to your mother?”

She hesitated a little, then said: “No; I thought of going to Holmestrand for a few days and writing to you from there to come down, so that we could be together for a time without undue interference and scenes. I should like to talk matters over with you in peace and quiet.”

“I am anxious to speak to you too. Can we not go up to your place?”

She did not answer directly.

“Is there anybody there?” he asked.

Jenny looked at him: “Anybody in my studio when I have left?”

“There might be somebody you do not wish to be seen with.”

She turned purple in the face: “Why? How could I know that you were sitting there spying on me?”

“My dear Jenny, I don’t mean to say that there was any harm in it, not on your part at least.”

Jenny said nothing, but went up the stairs again. In the studio she placed her bag on the floor, and without taking off her things stood looking at Helge while he hung up his coat and put his umbrella in the corner.

“Father told me this morning that you had been to the office and that mother had been below in the street.”

“Yes. It is a peculiar manner you people have—of spying, I mean. I must say, I find it hard to get accustomed to it.”

Helge turned very red.

“Forgive me, Jenny—I had to speak to you, and the porter said he was sure you were in. You know very well that I don’t suspect you.”

“Really, I hardly know anything,” she said, overcome with it all. “I cannot bear it any longer. All this suspicion and secrecy and discord. Good heavens, Helge!—can’t you protect me from all this?”

“My poor Jenny.” He rose and went to the window, where he remained standing with his back to her. “I have suffered more than you know. It is all so hopeless. Can you not see for yourself that mother’s jealousy is not without foundation?”

Jenny began to shiver. He turned round and saw it.

“I don’t believe father is aware of it himself. If he were, he would not give in like that to his desire to be with you. But he told me himself that we ought to go away from here, both of us. I am not so sure that your going away now is not his idea too.”

“No; I decided myself to go to Holmestrand, but he spoke to me yesterday about leaving town, when—when we got married.”

She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Dearest—if it is as you say, I will have to go away. Helge, Helge! What shall we do?”

“I am going,” he said abruptly, lifting her hands from his shoulders and pressing them against his face.

They stood a moment in silence.

“But I must go too. Can you not understand? As long as I thought your mother absurd, even common, I could keep my countenance, but now it is different. You should not have said it, Helge—even if you are mistaken. I cannot go there any more with that on my mind. Whether she is justified or not, I cannot meet her eyes. I shall not be myself, and I shall look guilty.”

“Come,” said Helge, leading her to the sofa and sitting down beside her.

“I am going to ask you a question. Do you love me, Jenny?”

“You know I do,” she said quickly, as if frightened.

He took her cold hand between both of his: “I know you did once—though, God knows, I never understood why. But I knew it was true when you said so. You were loving and kind to me, and I was happy, but I was always afraid of a time coming when you would not love me any longer.”

She looked up in his face, saying: “I am very, very fond of you, Helge.”

“I know,” he answered, with a shadow of a smile. “I don’t think you turn cold all at once to somebody you have loved—you are not that kind. I know that you don’t wish to make me suffer, and that you will suffer yourself the moment you understand that you don’t love me any longer. I love you above everything.”

He bent his head in tears. She put her arms round him.

“Helge—my own darling boy.”

He raised his head and pushed her gently away from him: “Jenny, that time in Rome I could have made you mine—you wanted it yourself, for you believed that we could only find happiness in a life together. I was not so sure, I suppose, as I did not risk it. But here at home I have been wanting you more than ever. I wanted you to be mine entirely, for I was afraid of losing you, but I saw you were frightened every time you understood that I was longing for you.”

She looked at him in awe. Yes, he was right—she had not wished to admit it, but it was so.

“If I asked you now—this moment—would you consent?”

Jenny moved her lips; then came a quick and firm “Yes.”

Helge smiled sadly, kissing her hand: “Gladly, because you wish to be mine? Because you cannot conceive of any happiness unless you are mine and I am yours? Not only because you want to be kind to me or don’t want to break your word—tell me the truth.”

She threw herself down on his knee and sobbed: “Let me go away for a time. I want to go up in the mountains. I must recover myself. I want to be your Jenny, as I was in Rome. I do want it, Helge, but I am so confused now. When I am myself again I will write you to come, and I will be your own Jenny again—yours only.”

“I am my mother’s son,” said Helge quietly. “We have got estranged from one another. Will you not convince me that I am everything in the world to you, the only man, more than anything else?—more than your work and your friends, to whom I felt you belonged more than to me—just as you feel a stranger among the people I belong to.”

“I did not feel a stranger towards your father.”

“No, but my father and I are strangers to one another. There is one interest—your work—which I cannot share with you completely, and I know now that I should be jealous of it. You see, I am her son. If I am not convinced that I am everything in the world to you, I cannot help being jealous—anxiously fearing that some day there might come another whom you could love more, who could understand you better. I am jealous by nature.”

“You must not be jealous, or everything will go to pieces. I cannot bear to be distrusted. I would rather you deceived me than doubted me—I could better forgive you that.”

“I could not”—with a bitter smile.

Jenny stroked the hair from his forehead and dried his eyes.

“We love one another, don’t we, Helge? When we get away from all this and we both wish everything to be well and right, don’t you think we can make one another happy?”

“I have seen too much. I dare not trust my good intentions or yours. Others have built their hopes on this and failed—I have seen what a hell two people can make life for each other. You will have to give me an answer to what I asked you. Do you love me? Do you wish to be mine—as you did in Rome? Do you wish it more than anything else in the world?”

“I love you very dearly, Helge,” she said, crying piteously.

“Thank you,” he said, kissing her hand. “I know you cannot help it, poor darling, that you don’t love me.”

“Helge,” she said imploringly.

“You cannot say that you wish me to stay because you would not be able to live without me. Dare you take the responsibility for everything that may happen if you say you love me—only so as not to send me away in sadness?”

Jenny sat looking down.

Helge put on his overcoat.

“Good-bye, Jenny.” He clasped her hand.

“Are you going away from me, Helge?”

“Yes. I am going.”

“And you will not come back?”

“Not unless you can say what I asked you to say.”

“I cannot say it now,” she whispered in agony.

Helge touched her hair lightly, and left.

Jenny remained on the sofa crying long and bitterly—her mind a perfect blank. Tired with crying, and worn out after all these months of petty, racking humiliation and quarrels, she felt her heart empty and cold. Helge was probably right.

After a while she began to feel hungry, and, looking at her watch, saw it was six. She had been sitting like this for four hours. When she rose to put on her coat she noticed that she had had it on all the time.

By the door she perceived a small pool of water running on to some of her pictures standing against the wall. She went for a duster to wipe it up, and, realizing suddenly that the pool was left from Helge’s umbrella, she leaned her forehead against the door and cried again.

---

VIII

Her dinner did not take long. She tried to read a paper to divert her mind for a moment, but it was no good. She might just as well go home and sit there.

On the upper landing a man stood waiting. He was tall and thin. She took the last steps running, calling out Helge’s name.

“It is not Helge,” came the answer. It was his father.

Jenny stood breathless before him, stretching out her hands: “Gert—what is it?—has anything happened?”

“Hush, hush!” He took her hand. “Helge has gone—he went to Kongsberg on a visit to a friend—a schoolfellow of his who lives there. Were you afraid, child, that something else had happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“My dear Jenny—you are quite beside yourself.”

She went past him in the passage and opened her door. There was still daylight in the studio and Gert Gram looked at her. He was pale himself.

“Do you feel it so much? Helge said—at least that is what I understood him to say—that you have agreed to—that you both think you are not suited to each other.”

Jenny was silent. Hearing somebody else say it, she wanted to protest. Up to now she had not quite realized that it was all over, but here was this man saying that they had agreed to part, and Helge had gone and her love for him was gone—she could not find it in her any more. It was all over, but, heavens! how was it possible, when she had not wanted it to end?

“Does it hurt so much?” he asked again. “Do you still love him?”

“Of course I love him.” Her voice shook. “One does not cease all at once loving somebody one has been very fond of, and one cannot be indifferent to having caused suffering.”

Gram did not speak at once; he sat down on the sofa, twisting his hat between his fingers: “I understand that it is very painful to both of you, but don’t you believe, Jenny, when you think it over, that it is for the best?”

She did not reply.

“I cannot tell you how pleased I was when I met you and saw what kind of a woman my son had won. It looked to me as if my boy had got everything that I have had to renounce in life. You were so pretty and refined, I had an impression that you were as good as you were clever, strong, and independent. And you were a talented artist as well, with no hesitation as to your aim and means. You spoke of your work with joy and tenderness and of your lover in the same way.

“Then Helge came home. You seemed to change then—in a remarkably short time. The disagreeable things which are the order of the day in our home impressed you too much; it seemed impossible that an unsympathetic future mother-in-law could completely spoil the happiness of a young loving woman. I began to fear that there was some other deeper cause that you would see for yourself later on, and that perhaps you realized your love for Helge was not so strong as you had imagined. Or that you understood you were not really suited to each other, and that it was more a temporary emotion which had brought you together. In Rome you were both alone, young and free, happy in your work; in strange circumstances, without the pressure of everyday ties, and both with the youthful longing for love in your hearts. Was that not enough to awaken a mutual sympathy and understanding even if they did not penetrate to the very inmost of your being?”

Jenny stood by the window looking at him. While he was speaking she felt an intense indignation at his words—although he might be right. Yet he did not understand, as he sat there plucking it all asunder, what it was that really hurt her:

“It does not make it easier even if there is some sense in what you say. Perhaps you are right.”

“Is it not better anyhow that you have realized it now than if it had happened later, when the bonds would be stronger, and the suffering much greater in breaking them?”

“It is not that—it is not that.” She interrupted herself suddenly: “It is that I—yes—I despise myself. I have given way to an emotional impulse—lied to myself; I ought to have known if I could keep my word before I said: I love. I have always hated that kind of levity more than anything in the world. Now—to my shame—I find I have done that very thing.”

Gram looked at her. Suddenly he turned pale—and then crimson. After a while he said, speaking with effort:

“I said it was better for two people who were not in perfect understanding to realize it before their relations had made such a change in their lives that neither of them—especially she—could ever obliterate the traces. If such be the case, they should try with some resignation and goodwill on either side to bring about harmony. Should this not be possible, then there is still the other way out. I don’t know, of course, if you and Helge—how far you are affected....”

Jenny laughed scornfully:

“I understand what you mean. To me it is just as binding that I have wanted to be his—promised it and cannot keep my promise—and just as humiliating as if I had really given myself to him—perhaps even more so.”

“You will not speak like that when once you meet the man you can love with true, deep feeling.”

Jenny shrugged her shoulders:

“Do you really believe in true and great love as you say?”

“Yes, I do. I know that you young people find the expression ludicrous, but I believe in it—for a good reason.”

“I believe that every one loves according to his individuality; those who have a greater mind and are true to themselves do not fritter themselves away in little love affairs. I thought that I myself.... But I was twenty-eight when I met Helge, and I had never yet been in love. I was tired of waiting and wanted to try it. He was in love, young, warm-blooded, and sincere—and it tempted me. I lied to myself—exactly as all other women do. His intensity warmed me, and I was ready enough to imagine that I shared it, although I knew such an illusion can only be kept alive as long as there is no claim on one to prove one’s love.

“Other women live under this illusion quite innocently, because they do not know the difference between good and bad, and go on lying to themselves, but I can plead nothing of that kind in my defence. I am really just as small and selfish and false as other women, and you may depend upon it, Gert, I shall never know what that great and true love of yours is.”

“Well, Jenny,” said Gert, with his same melancholy smile—“God knows, I am neither great nor strong, and I’ve lived in lies and abominations for twelve years. But I was ten years older than you are now when I met a woman who taught me to believe in the feeling you speak of with such scorn, and my faith in it has never been shaken.”

They were silent for a moment.

“And you remained with her?” said Jenny at last.

“We had the children. I did not understand then that I should never have any influence on my own children, when another woman than their mother possessed my whole heart and soul.

“She was married too—very unhappily. Her husband was a drunkard. She had a little girl whom she could have brought with her. But we both stayed.

“It was part of the punishment, you see, for my relations with her who only gratified my senses, but was nothing to my soul. Our love was too beautiful to live on a lie; we had to conceal it like a crime.

“Believe me, Jenny, there is no other happiness than a great love.”

She went up to him and he rose; they stood an instant close to one another without speaking.

“I must go now,” he said abruptly, in a strained voice. “I must be back in time, or she will suspect something.”

Jenny nodded, and followed him to the door.

“You must not believe that your heart is beyond love,” he said; “it is a proud heart—and a warm one. Will you still count me among your friends, little girl?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Jenny, giving him her hand.

He bent over it and held it long to his lips—longer than ever before.

---

IX

Gunnar Heggen and Jenny Winge were to have an exhibition together in November. He came to town for that purpose. He had been in the country that summer, painting red granite, green pines, and blue sky, and had lately been to Stockholm, where he had sold a picture.

“How is Cesca?” asked Jenny, when Heggen was in her studio one morning having a drink.

“Cesca is all right.” Gunnar took a gulp from his glass, smoked, and looked at Jenny, and she looked at him.

It was so nice to be together again and talk about people and things she had got so far away from. It seemed almost as if it had been in a remote country beyond all oceans that she had known him and Cesca, lived and worked with them, and been happy with them.

She looked at his open sunburnt face and crooked nose; it had been broken when he was a child. Cesca once said that the blow had saved Gunnar’s face from being the most perfect fashion-plate type.

There was some truth in it. Looking at his features separately, they were exactly those of a rustic Adonis. His brown hair curled over a low, broad forehead and big steely blue eyes; the mouth was red, with full lips and beautiful white teeth. His face and his strong neck were tanned by the sun, and his broad, somewhat short body with well-knit muscles was almost brutally well shaped. But the sensual mouth and heavy eyelids had a peculiarly innocent and unaffected expression, and his smile could be most refined. The hands were regular working hands, with short fingers and strong joints, but the way he moved them was particularly graceful.

He had grown thinner, but looked very well and contented, while she herself felt tired and dissatisfied. He had been working the whole summer, reading Greek tragedies and Keats and Shelley when he was not painting.

“I should like to read the tragedies in the original,” said Gunnar, “and I am going to learn Greek and Latin.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Jenny. “I am afraid there are so many things you will want to study before you get any peace in your mind that you will end by not painting at all—except in your holidays.”

“I have to learn those two languages because I am going to write some articles.”

“You!” cried Jenny, laughing. “Are you going to write articles too?”

“Yes; a long series of them about many different things. Amongst others, that we must introduce Latin and Greek into our schools again; we must see that we get some culture up here. We cannot go on like this any longer. Our national emblem will be a wooden porringer with painted roses on it and some carving, which is supposed to be a clumsy imitation of the poorest of all European styles, the rococo. That is how we are national up here in Norway. You know that the best praise they can give anybody in this country—artist or other decent fellow—is that he has broken away—broken away from school, tradition, customary manners, and ordinary civilized people’s conception of seemly behaviour and decency.

“I should like to point out for once that, considering our circumstances, it would be much more meritorious if somebody tried to get into touch with, appropriate, exchange, and bring home to this hole of ours some of the heaped-up treasures in Europe that are called culture.

“What we do is to detach a small part from a connective whole—a single ornament of a style, literally speaking—and carve and chip such an ugly and clumsy copy of it that it becomes unrecognizable. Then we boast that it is original or nationally Norwegian. And it is the same with spiritual movements.”

“Yes, but those sins were committed even when classical education was the official foundation of all education.”

“Quite so. But it was only a small part of the classics—a detached piece. A little Latin grammar and so on. We have never had a complete picture among the stories of our valued ancestors of what you might call the classical spirit. As long as we cannot have that, we are outside Europe. If we do not consider Greek and Roman history as the oldest history of our own culture, we have not got European culture. It does not matter what that history was in reality, but the version of it matters. The war between Sparta and Messene, for instance, was in fact only the fights between some half-savage tribes a very long time ago, but in the delivery of it, as we know it, it is the classic expression for an impulse which makes a sound people let themselves be killed to the last man rather than lose their individuality or the right to live their own life.

“Bless you, for many a hundred years we have not fought for our honour; we have lived merely to nurse our insides. The Persian wars were really trifles, but for a vigorous people Salamis, ThermopylÆ, and the Acropolis mean the bloom of all the noblest and soundest instincts, and as long as these instincts are valued, and a people believes that it has certain qualities to uphold, and a past, a present, and a future to be proud of, these names will be surrounded by a certain glamour. And a poet can write a poem on ThermopylÆ and imprint it with the feelings of his own time, as Leopardi has done in his ‘Ode to Italy.’ Do you remember I read it to you in Rome?”

Jenny nodded.

“It is a bit rhetorical, but beautiful, is it not? Do you remember the part about Italia, the fairest of women, who sits in the dust chained and with loosened hair, her tears dropping into her lap? And how he wishes to be one of the young Greeks who go to meet death at ThermopylÆ, fearless and merry as if going to dance? Their names are sacred, and Simonides in dying sings songs of praise from the top of Antelos.

“And all the old beautiful tales, symbols, and parables that will never grow old. Think of Orpheus and Eurydice—so simple; the faith of love conquers death even; a single instant of doubt and everything is lost. But in this country they know only that it is the book of an opera.

“The English and the French have used the old symbols in making new and living art. Abroad, in certain good periods, there were people born with instincts and feelings so highly cultivated that they could be developed into an ability to make the fate of the Atrides understood and moving as a reality. The Swedes, too, have living connections with the classics—but we have never had them. What kind of books do we read here—and write?—feminine novels about sexless fancy-figures in empire dress, and dirty Danish books, which do not interest any man above sixteen, unless he is obliged to wear an electric belt. Or about some green youth, prattling of the mysterious eternal feminine to a little chorus girl who is impertinent to him and deceives him, because he has not sense enough to understand that the riddle can be solved by means of a good caning.”

Jenny laughed. Gunnar was walking up and down the door.

“Hjerrild, I think, is working at a book on the ‘Sphinx’ at present. As it happens, I also knew the lady once. It never went so far that I soiled my hands by giving her a thrashing, but I had been fond enough of her to feel it rather badly when I discovered her deceit. I have worked it off, you see. I don’t think there is anything you cannot get over in time by your own effort.”

Jenny sat silent for a second, then said: “Tell me about Cesca.”

“Well, I don’t think Cesca has touched a paint-brush since she married. When I went to see them she opened the door; they have no servant. She wore a big apron and had a broom in her hand. They have a studio and two small rooms; they cannot both work in the studio, of course, and her whole time is taken up with the house, she said. The first morning I was there she sprawled on the floor the whole time. Ahlin was out. First she swept, then she crept round and poked under the furniture with a brush for those little tufts of dust, you know, that stick in the corners. Then she scrubbed the floor and dusted the room, and you should have seen how awkwardly she did it all. We went out to buy food together; I was to lunch with them. When Ahlin came home she retired to the kitchen, and when the lunch was ready at last, all her little curls were damp—but the food was not bad. She washed up in the most unpractical way, going to the sink with every article to rinse it under the tap. Ahlin and I helped her, and I gave her some good advice, you know.

“I asked them to dine with me, and Cesca, poor thing, was very pleased at not having to cook and wash up.

“If there are going to be children—as I suppose there are—you may depend upon it that Cesca has done with painting, and it would be a great pity. I cannot help thinking it’s sad.”

“I don’t know. Husband and children always hold the first place with a woman; sooner or later she will long to have them.”

Gunnar looked at her—then sighed:

“If they are fond of one another, that is to say.”

“Do you think Cesca is happy with Ahlin?”

“I don’t really know. I think she is very fond of him. Anyhow it was ‘Lennart thinks’ and ‘Will you?’ and ‘Shall I?’ and ‘Do you think the sauce is all right, Lennart?’ and so on the whole time. She has taken to speaking a shocking mixture of Swedish and Norwegian. I must say that I don’t quite understand their relations. He was very much in love with her, you remember, and he is not despotic or brutal—quite the contrary—but she has become so cowed and humble, our little Cesca. It cannot be housekeeping worries only, although they seemed to weigh heavily on her. She has no talent in that direction, but she is a conscientious little thing in her way, and they are rather badly off, I understand.

“Perhaps she has made some great mistake, profited by the wedding night, for instance, to tell him about Hans Hermann, Norman Douglas, and Hjerrild, and all the rest of her achievements from one end to the other. It might have been just a little overwhelming.”

“Cesca has never concealed anything about her doings. I am sure he knew all her story before.”

“H’m,” said Gunnar, mixing himself a fresh drink. “There might have been one or two points she has kept quiet so far, and thought she ought to tell her husband.”

“For shame, Gunnar,” said Jenny.

“Well—you never really know what to think about Cesca. Her version of the Hans Hermann business is very peculiar, though I am sure Cesca has not done anything that I would call wrong. I cannot—on the whole—see what difference it makes to a man if his wife has had a liaison—or several—before, provided she had been true and loyal while it lasted. This claim of physical innocence is crude. If a woman has been really fond of a man and has accepted his love, it is rather mean of her to leave him without spending a gift on him.

“Naturally I should prefer my wife never to have loved anybody else before, so, perhaps, when it is your own wife you may think differently. Old prejudices and selfish vanity may count for something.”

Jenny sipped at her drink, and was on the point of saying something when she checked herself. Gunnar had stopped by the window, standing with his back to her, his hands in his trouser pockets:

“Oh, I think it is sad, Jenny—I mean when once in a while you meet a woman who is really gifted in one way or another and takes a pleasure in developing her gift by energetic work—feels that she is an individual who can decide for herself what is right or wrong, and has the will to cultivate faculties and instincts that are good and valuable and eradicate others which are bad and unworthy of her; and then one fine day she throws herself away on a man, gives up everything, work, development—herself for the sake of a wretched male. Don’t you think it sad, Jenny?”

“It is. But that is how we are made—all of us.”

“I don’t understand it. We men never do understand you, and I think it is because we cannot get it into our heads that individuals who are supposed to be reasonable beings are so completely devoid of self-esteem, for that is what you are. Woman has no soul—that is a true word. You admit more or less openly that love affairs are the only things that really interest you.”

“There are men who do the same—at least in their behaviour.”

“Yes, but a decent man has no respect for those effeminates. Officially at least we do not wish it to be considered anything but a natural diversion beside our work. Or a capable man wishes to have a family because he knows he can provide for more than himself, and wants somebody to continue his work.”

“But surely woman has other missions in life.”

“That is mere talk—unless she wants to be a reasonable being and work, and not content herself with being a female only. What is the good of producing a lot of children if they are not meant to grow up for any other purpose than continued production—if the raw material is not to be used?”

“It may be true to a certain extent,” Jenny said, smiling.

“I know it is. I have seen enough of women to know, ever since I was a youngster and went to the workers’ academy. I remember a girl at one of the English classes; she wanted to learn the language to be able to talk to the sailors on the foreign men-of-war. The only aim of the girls that counted for anything was to get a situation in England or America. We boys studied because we wanted to learn something for the sake of mental gymnastics and to complete as much as possible what we had learnt at school. The girls read novels.

“Take socialism, for instance. Do you think any woman has an idea what it really means, unless she has a husband who has taught her to see? Try to explain to a woman why the community must arrive at such a stage that every child born must have the opportunity to cultivate its faculties, if it has any, and to live its life in liberty and beauty—if it can bear liberty and has a sense of beauty. Women believe that liberty means no work and no restrictions as to their behaviour. Sense of beauty they have none; they only want to dress up in the ugliest and most expensive things, because they are the fashion. Look at the homes they arrange. The richer, the uglier. Is there any fashion, be it ever so ugly or indecent, that they don’t adopt if they can afford it? You cannot deny it.

“I won’t mention their morals, because they haven’t any. Let alone your treatment of us men, the way you treat one another is disgusting.”

Jenny smiled. She thought he was right in some things and wrong in others, but she was not inclined to discuss them. Yet she felt she ought to say something:

“Aren’t you rather hard on us?” she ventured.

“You shall see it all in print one day,” he said complacently.

“There is something in it, but all women are not alike; there is a difference even if it be only a difference in degree.”

“Certainly, but what I have said applies to a certain extent to all of you, and do you know why? Because the principal thing to all of you is a man—one you have or one you miss. The only thing in life which is serious and worth anything—I mean work—is never a serious thing to you. To the best of you it is so for a short time, and I believe it is because you are sure when you are young and pretty that ‘he’ will come along. But as time goes and he does not turn up, and you get on in years, you get slack and weary and dissatisfied.”

Jenny nodded.

“Look here, Jenny. I have always placed you on the same level as a first-class man. You will soon be twenty-nine, and that is about the right age to begin independent work. You don’t mean to say that now, when you should begin your individual life in earnest, you wish to encumber yourself with husband, children, housekeeping, and all those things which would only be so many ties and a hindrance in your work?”

Jenny laughed softly.

“If you had all those things and were going to die, surrounded by husband and kiddies and all that, and you felt you had not attained what you knew you might have done, don’t you think you would repent and regret? I am sure you would.”

“Yes, but if I had reached the farthest goal of my abilities and I knew, when dying, that my life and my work would live a long time after I had gone—and I were alone, with no living soul belonging to me, don’t you think I should regret and repent then too?”

Heggen was silent a moment.

“Yes. Celibacy, of course, is not the same to women as to men. It often means that they are kept outside all those things in life which people make the most fuss about—simply that whole groups of organs, mental as well as physical, are wasting away unused. Ugh! Sometimes I almost wish you would be a little frivolous for once and have done with it all, so that you could work in peace and quiet afterwards.”

“Women who have been a little frivolous, as you say, are not done with it. If they were disappointed the first time, they hope for better luck the next. One does not settle down disappointed, and before you know it you have had many a try.”

“Not you,” he said quickly.

“Thanks. It is quite new to hear you speak like that. You have always said that when women begin such a life they invariably end by being dragged down completely.”

“Most of them do. But there must be some exceptions. It applies to those who have no other instincts in life than a man—not to those who are something by themselves and not only of female sex. Why should you, for instance, not be true and loyal to a man even if you both saw that you could not give up everything to tie yourself down as his wife for the rest of your life? Love always dies sooner or later. Don’t let yourself be deceived on that point.”

“Yes; we know it—but still we won’t believe it.” She laughed. “No, my friend—either we love and believe it is the only thing worth living for, or we do not love—and are unhappy because we don’t.”

“Jenny, I don’t like to hear you speak like that. No; to feel oneself in full vigour, with all faculties alert, ready to adopt and appropriate, to adapt and produce, make the utmost possible of oneself—work—that is the only thing worth living for, believe me.”

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X

Jenny bent over Gert Gram’s chrysanthemums: “I am so glad you like my pictures.”

“Yes, I like them very much, especially the one of the young girl with the corals—as I told you already.”

Jenny shook her head.

“I think the colouring is so lovely,” said Gram.

“It is not well finished. The scarf and the dress should have been more thoroughly worked up, but when I was painting it both Cesca and I were distracted by other things.”

After a while she asked:

“Do you hear from Helge? How is he?”

“He does not write much. He is working at the essay for his doctor of science degree—you know he prepared himself for it in Rome. He says he is all right. He does not write to his mother at all, and she, of course, is very vexed about it. She has not improved as a companion, I am sorry to say, but she is not happy, poor thing, at present.”

Jenny moved the flowers to her writing-table and began to arrange them:

“I am glad Helge is working again. He did not get much done in the summer.”

“Neither did you, dear.”

“No, it is true, and the worst of it is that I have not been able to start yet. But I don’t feel the least inclined to, and I was going to begin etching this winter, but....”

“Don’t you think it quite natural that a disappointment like yours should take some time to get over? Your exhibition is a success, and has been well spoken of in the papers. Don’t you think that is enough to make you want to work again? You have got a bid for the Aventine picture already—are you going to accept it?”

She shrugged her shoulders:

“Of course. I am obliged to accept. They always need money at home, as you know. Besides, I must go abroad; it is not good for me to stay here long.”

“Do you want to go abroad?” said Gram gently, looking down. “Well, I suppose you are; it is only natural.”

“Oh, this exhibition,” said Jenny, sitting down in the rocking-chair—“all my pictures were painted such a long time ago, it seems to me, even the recent ones. The sketch of the Aventine was finished the day I met Helge, and I painted the picture while we were together—that of Cesca as well. And the one from Stenersgaten in your place, while I was waiting for him to come home. I have done nothing since. Ugh! So Helge is at work again?”

“It is only natural, my dear, that an experience like yours should leave deeper traces in a woman.”

“Oh yes, yes—a woman; that is the whole misery of it. It is just like a woman to become uninterested and utterly lazy because of a love that does not even exist.”

“My dear Jenny,” said Gram, “I think it quite natural that it should take some time for you to get over it—to get beyond it, as it were; one always does, and then one understands that the experience has not been in vain, but that one’s soul is the richer for it in some way or other.”

Jenny did not reply.

“I am sure there is much you would not like to have missed—all the happy, warm, sunny days with your friend in that beautiful country. Am I not right?”

“Will you tell me one thing, Gert?—is it your own personal experience that you have been able to enrich your soul, as you say, by the incidents of your life?”

He gave a start as if hurt and surprised at her brutality; it was a moment before he answered her:

“It is quite a different thing. The experiences which are the results of sin—I don’t mean sin in the orthodox sense, but the consequences of acting contrary to your understanding—are always far from sweet. I mean that my experiences have made my life in a way richer and deeper than a lesser misfortune might have done—since it was my fate not to attain the greatest happiness. I have a feeling that once it will be the case in a still higher degree, and will help me to understand the real meaning of life.

“In your case, I meant it in a different way. Even if your happiness proved to be of a passing nature, it was pure and guiltless while it lasted, because you believed in it implicitly and enjoyed it without any mental reservation. You deceived nobody but yourself.”

Jenny did not speak. She would have had a great deal to say in opposition, but she felt dimly that he would not understand her.

“Don’t you remember Ibsen’s words:

“‘Though I ram my ship aground, it was grand to sail the seas’?”

“I am surprised at you, Gert, for repeating those idiotic words. Nowadays we have too great a feeling of responsibility and too much self-esteem, most of us, to accept that kind of reasoning. If I am wrecked and sink, I will try not to wince, if I know that I have not run my ship aground myself. As far as I understand, the best sailors prefer to go down with their ship if the fault is theirs, rather than survive the disaster.”

“I am of the opinion that, as a rule, one can thank oneself for every misfortune,” said Gram, smiling, “but that one can nearly always draw some spiritual benefit out of it.”

“I agree with you on the first point—and on the second on the condition that the misfortune does not consist in the diminution of one’s self-esteem.”

“You should not take this so seriously. You are quite excited and bitter. I remember what you said on the day Helge left, but, my dear child, you cannot really mean that one should quench every affection at its birth unless one can guarantee the moment it comes into life that it will last until one’s death, endure all adversity, be ready for every sacrifice, and that it will understand the personality of its object as in a vision, show up its most sacred depths to prevent later change of opinion about him or her.”

“Yes,” said Jenny sharply.

“Have you ever felt this yourself?” asked Gram.

“No, but I know it, all the same. I have always known that it should be so. But when I was twenty-eight and still an old maid, longing to love and be loved, and Helge came and fell in love with me, I laid aside all claims on myself and my love, taking what I could get—to a certain extent in good faith. It will be all right, I thought—I am sure it will—although I did not feel assured in my inmost heart that nothing else could be possible. Let me tell you what my friend Heggen told me the other day. He despises women truly and honestly—and he is right. We have no self-esteem, and we are so lazy that we can never make up our mind in earnest to shape our life and happiness ourselves, and to work with that purpose. Secretly we all nourish the hope that a man will come and offer us happiness, so that we need not make any effort ourselves. The most womanly of us, who by happiness mean only idleness and finery, hang on to the man who can give them plenty of it. If amongst us there are a few who really have the right feelings and are longing to become good and strong, and making efforts in that direction—we still hope to meet a man on the way and to become what we want to be through his love.

“We can work for a time pretty honestly and seriously, and take a pleasure in it too, but in our hearts we are waiting for a still greater joy, which we cannot acquire by our work, but must receive as a gift. We women can never get to the point where our work is everything to us.”

“Do you believe work alone is enough for a man? Never,” said Gram.

“It is for Gunnar. You may depend on it that he will keep women in their right place in his life—as trifles.”

Gram laughed: “How old is your friend Heggen? I hope for the man’s own sake that he will change his opinion some day about the most conclusive influence in life.”

“I don’t,” said Jenny vehemently, “but I hope I, too, shall learn some day to put this nonsense about love in its right place.”

“My dear Jenny, you speak as if—as if you had no sense, I was going to say, but I know you have,” said Gram, with a melancholy smile. “Shall I tell you something of what I know about love, little one? If I did not believe in it, I should not have the least particle of faith in men—or in myself. Do you believe that it is only women who think life meaningless, and find their hearts empty and frozen if they have nothing but their work to love or to depend upon? Do you believe there is a single soul living who has not moments of doubt in himself? You must have somebody in whose keeping you can give the best in you—your love and your trust.

“When I say that my own life since my marriage has been a hell, I am not using too strong words, and if I have been able to stand it in a way it is because I think the love Rebecca has for me partly exonerates her. I know that her feelings of mean pleasure at having the power to torment and humiliate me with her jealousy and rage are a caricature of betrayed love, and it is a kind of satisfaction to my sense of justice that there is a reason for my unhappiness. I betrayed her when I took her love without giving her mine—intending secretly to give her only crumbs—the small coin of love—in payment for the best of herself she offered me. If life punishes every sin against the sacredness of love so ruthlessly, it proves to me that there is nothing holier in life, and that he who is true to his ideal of love will reap his recompense in the greatest and purest bliss.

“I told you once that I learnt to know and to love a woman when it was too late. She had loved me from the time we were children without my knowing, or caring to know it. When she heard of my marriage she accepted a man who vowed that she could save and raise him if she married him. I know you would scorn any such means of saving, but you don’t know, child, how you would act yourself, if you knew the being you loved with your whole soul was in the arms of another, and found your life not worth living, and if you heard an erring human being ask you to give him the life you did not value and save him thereby.

“Helene was unhappy, and so was I. Later we met, understood one another, and it came to an explanation which, however, did not result in what people call happiness. We were both bound by ties we dared not break, and I must admit that my love for her changed as the hope of making her my wife slowly died, but the memory of her is the greatest treasure of my life. She is now living in another part of the world, devoting her life to her children and trying to lessen for them the misery of having to live with a father who is a drunkard and a moral wreck. For her sake I have held on to my faith in the purity of the human soul, in its beauty and its strength—and in love, and I know, too, that the remembrance of me inspires Helene with the strength to struggle on and to suffer because she loves me today as she did in our childhood, and believes in me, in my talent, my love, and that I was worthy of a better fate. I am still something to her, don’t you think?”

Jenny did not answer.

“The happiness in life is not only to be loved, Jenny; the greatest happiness is to love.”

“H’m. A very poor sort of happiness, I should say, to love when your love is not returned.”

He sat quiet for a while, looking down; then said almost in a whisper:

“Great or small, it is happiness to know somebody of whom one thinks only good, about whom one can say: God give her happiness, for she deserves it—give her all that I never had. She is pure and beautiful, warm-hearted and sweet, talented and kind. It means happiness to me, dear Jenny, to be able to pray like this for you. No; it is nothing to be afraid of, little one.”

He had risen, and she rose too, making a movement as if she were afraid he would come nearer. Gram stopped and smiled:

“How could you help seeing it—you who are so clever. I thought you saw it before I understood it myself. It has come quite naturally. My life is running its course towards old age, inactivity, darkness, death, and I knew that I should never reach what I have longed for all my life. Then I met you. You are to me the most glorious woman I have ever known; you had the same ideals I once had, and you were on the way to attain them. How could I help crying out in my heart: God help her to succeed. Do not let her be wasted as I have been!

“You were so sweet to me; you came to see me in my den, and you told me about yourself. You listened to me, you understood, and your beautiful eyes were so full of sympathy, so soft and loving. Dearest, are you crying?” He seized both her hands and pressed them passionately to his lips:

“Don’t cry, dear; you must not. Why do you cry? You are shivering—tell me why you are crying like this?”

“It is all so sad,” she sobbed.

“Sit down here.” He was on his knees before her—for a second he rested his forehead against her knee.

“Do not cry because of me. Do you think for a moment I wish that I had never met you? If you have loved, and you wish it had never been, you have not really loved. Believe me, it is so. No, Jenny, not for anything in the world would I miss what I feel for you!

“And you must not cry about yourself. You will be happy. I know it. Of all the men who will love you, one will lie at your feet some day, as I do now, and say that to him it is life itself to be there, and you will think so too. You will understand that to sit thus with him is the only happiness to you, even if it were a brief moment of rest after a day full of toil and hardships, and in the poorest of cottages—a far greater happiness than if you became the greatest artist that ever existed and enjoyed the highest measure of fame and praise. Is not that what you believe yourself?”

“Yes,” she whispered, exhausted with weeping.

“You must not despair of winning that happiness some day. All the time you are striving to become a true artist and a good and able woman, you are longing to meet some one who thinks that all you have done to attain your aim is right and that he loves you for it—is it not so, Jenny?”

She nodded, and Gram kissed her hands reverently.

“You have already reached the goal. You are everything that is good and refined, proud and lovely. I say it, and one day a younger, better, and stronger man will say the same—and you will be happy to listen. Are you not a little pleased to hear me say that you are the best and sweetest and most wonderful little girl in the world?—look at me, Jenny. Can I not give you a little pleasure by saying that I believe you will have all possible happiness because you deserve it?”

She looked down into his face, trying to smile; then, bending her head, she passed her hands over his hair:

“Oh, Gert, I could not help it—could I? I did not want to do you any harm.”

“Do not grieve about it, little one! I love you because you are what you want to be—what I once hoped to be. You must not be sad for my sake, even if you think you have caused me pain; there are sorrows that are good, full of blessing, I assure you.”

She went on crying softly.

Presently he whispered:

“May I come and see you now and again? Will you not send for me when you are sad? I should so like to try and be of some help to my dear little girl.”

“I dare not, Gert.”

“Dear child, I am an old man; remember, I might be your father.”

“For—for your sake, I mean. It is not right.”

“Oh yes, Jenny. Do you believe that I think less about you when I don’t see you? I ask only to see you, talk to you, to try and do something for you. Won’t you let me? Do let me come.”

“I don’t know—I don’t know what to say, but please go now. I cannot bear any more today—it is all so terrible. Won’t you go, dear?”

He rose slowly:

“I will. Good-bye! Jenny, dear child, you are quite beside yourself.”

“Yes”—in a whisper.

“I will go now, but I want to see you before you go away. I shall come back when you are yourself again and not frightened of me; there is no reason for that, dear.”

She was quiet for a little, then suddenly drew him close to her for a second, brushing his cheek with her lips.

“Go now, Gert.”

“Thank you. God bless you, Jenny.”

When he was gone she paced up and down the floor, shivering without knowing why. In her heart she felt a certain pleasure in remembering his words when he was on his knees before her. She had always looked upon Gert as a weak man, as one who had suffered himself to be dragged down and been trodden upon as those who are down always will be. And now he had suddenly revealed himself to her as possessing a great fortitude of soul, and a being rich enough and willing to help, while she was bewildered, distracted, and sick with longing in her inmost heart behind the shield of opinions and thoughts which she had made for herself.

She had asked him to go. Why? Because she was so miserably poor herself and had complained of her need to him who, she thought, was just as poor as she herself, and he had showed her that he was rich, offering gladly to help her out of his abundance. It was no doubt because she felt humiliated that she asked him to go.

To accept anything from an affection to which she could not respond had always seemed mean to her, but then she never imagined that she would be in need of such help.

He had not been allowed to continue the work to which he was devoted; the love he had borne in his heart was never to live. Yet he did not despair. That was probably the advantage of having faith—it did not matter so much what one believed, provided there was somebody beside oneself one could trust, for it is impossible to live with only oneself to love and trust.

She was quite familiar with the thought of voluntary death. If she died now there were a few she cared for and who would be sorry, but none who could not do without her, nor any one to whom she was so necessary that she would feel it her duty to prolong her life for their sake. Provided they did not know she had done it herself, her mother and sisters would mourn her for a year and then remember her with gentle melancholy. Cesca and Gunnar would be more sorry than anybody else, because they would understand that she had been unhappy, but she was outside their life. The one who loved her most would miss her most, but as she had nothing to give him he might love her just as well dead. To love her was his happiness; he had the capacity in him to be happy, but if she had not, it was no good living. Work could not fill her life to such an extent that she would not long for anything else besides. Why then go on living because they said she had talent? Nobody had more pleasure of her art than she had in exercising it, and the pleasure was not great enough to satisfy her.

Gunnar was not right in what he had once said, rather brutally, that she was a martyr to her own virtue. That could easily be remedied, but she dared not, because she was always afraid of meeting later what she had been longing for. And the least satisfactory of all would be to live close to another human being and yet in one’s inmost soul be just as lonely as before. Oh no—no. She would not belong to a man and submit to all the physical and mental intimacies as the consequence of it, and then discover one day that she did not know him, and that he had never known her—that the one had never understood the language of the other.

She lived because she was waiting; she did not want a lover, because she was expecting a master, and she did not wish to die—not now while she was waiting.

No, she was not going to throw away her life either this way or that; she could not die so poor that she had not a single beloved thing to bid farewell to. She dared not, because she wanted to believe that some day things would be different.

There was nothing else to do but to take up painting again, although it would probably not be much good now, love-sick as she was. She laughed. That was just what she was—love-sick. The object did not exist at present, but the love was there.

Jenny went to the window and looked out. In the gathering darkness the sky looked almost violet, and the tiled roofs, the chimney-pots, and the telephone wires all melted together into one grey tint in the twilight. A reddish light rose from the streets, colouring the frosty haze. The rolling of carriages and the screech of a tram on the rails sounded clearly on the frozen ground.

She did not feel inclined to go home to dinner, but, having promised her mother to come, she put the stove out and left.

The cold was raw and damp; the fog smelt of soot and gas and frozen dust. What a dull street it was where her studio lay. It led down from the centrum, with its noise and traffic, its shops with brilliant show windows and people streaming in and out, and its course ended by the lifeless grey walls of the fort. The houses on either side looked grey and deserted: the new buildings of stone and glass, where business fluttered in and out on paper, prepared by busy young people in the strong white light behind big windows, and people talked to each other by telephone—and the old ones remaining from the time the town was small were low and brown, with shiny fronts and linen blinds in the office windows. Here and there behind a small pane with curtains and flower-pots was a humble home—strangely solitary dwellings in this thoroughfare, where the houses mostly were deserted at night. The shops were not of the kind that people rush in and out of. Some of them had wall-paper, plaster ornaments for ceilings, and stoves for sale; others were furniture stores, with the windows full of empty mahogany beds and varnished oak chairs that looked as if nobody would ever sit on them.

In a gateway a child was standing—a little boy, blue in the face from cold with a big basket on his arm. He was looking at two dogs fighting in the centre of the street and making the frozen dust fly about. He started when the dogs came tumbling near the place where he was standing.

“Are you afraid?” asked Jenny. As the boy did not answer, she continued: “Would you like me to see you past them?” He came to her side immediately, but did not speak.

“Which way are you going? Where do you live?”

“In Voldgata.”

“Did you come on an errand all the way here, such a little boy?—it was very brave of you.”

“We deal with Aases in this street because father knows him,” was the boy’s answer. “This basket is so heavy.”

Jenny looked about her; the street was nearly empty:

“Give it to me. I will carry it for you a bit of the way.”

The boy gave her the basket reluctantly.

“Take my hand till we have got past those dogs. How cold your hands are! Have you no gloves?”

The boy shook his head.

“Put your other hand in my muff. You won’t? You think it a silly thing for a boy to carry a muff—is that it?”

She remembered Nils when he was small; she had often longed for him. He was big now and had many friends; he was at an age when it was no fun to walk about with an elder sister. He came seldom to her studio now. The year she had been abroad and the months she had spent with Helge had changed their relations; perhaps when he got older they would be friends again as before. They probably would, for they were fond of each other, but just now he was happy without her. She wished he were a small boy now, so that she could take him on her lap and tell him stories full of adventures while she washed and undressed him and kissed him—or a little bigger, as in the time when they went out together for excursions in Nordmarken, and the road to the butcher’s was long and full of remarkable happenings.

“What is you name, little boy?”

“Ausjen Torstein Mo.”

“How old are you?”

“Six.”

“I suppose you don’t go to school yet?”

“No, but I shall in April.”

“Do you think it will be nice?”

“No—the teacher is so strict. Oscar goes to school, but we shan’t be together, for he is being moved into the second form.”

“Is Oscar your friend?” asked Jenny.

“Yes; we live in the same house.”

After a short pause Jenny spoke again: “Aren’t you sorry there is no snow? You have got the hill by the bay where you can toboggan. Have you got a sled?”

“No, but I have snowshoes and ski.”

They had turned into another street. Jenny let go the boy’s hand and looked at the basket. It was so heavy, and Ausjen was so small—so she kept it, although she did not like to be seen with a poor little urchin in a good street. She would have like to take him to the confectioner’s, but thought it would be rather awkward if she met any one she knew there.

In the dark Voldgata she took his hand again and carried the basket to the house where he lived, giving him a coin as a parting gift.

On her way through the town she bought chocolates and a pair of red woollen gloves to send to Ausjen. It was nice to be able to give somebody an unexpected pleasure. She might try to get him for a model, but he was very small to sit so long. Poor little hand; it had got warm in hers, and it seemed as if it had been good for her to hold it. Yes, she wanted to try and paint him; he had a queer little face. She would give him milk with a little coffee in it and a nice roll and butter, and she would work and talk to Ausjen....

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