Jenny moved Francesca’s portrait on to the easel. The white blouse and the green skirt looked hard and ugly. It would have to be toned down. The face was well drawn, the position good.
This episode with Gram was really nothing to be serious about. It was time she became reasonable. She must do away with those silly notions that she was afraid of every man she met—as with Gunnar in the beginning—afraid of falling in love with him, and almost more of his falling in love with her: a thing she was so unused to that it bewildered her.
Why could one not be friends with a man? If not, the world would be all a muddle. She and Gunnar were friends—a solid, comfortable friendship.
There was much about Gram that would make a friendship between them quite natural. They had had much the same experiences. He was so young and so full of confidence in her; she liked his “Is it not?” and “Don’t you think?” He had talked yesterday about being in love with her—he thought at least he was, he said. She smiled to herself. A man would not speak to her as he had done if he had really fallen in love with a woman and wanted to win her.
“He is a dear boy; that’s what he is.”
Today he had not broached the subject. She liked him when he said that if he had been really fond of the girl he would have wished her happiness with the other man.
X
Jenny and Helge were running hand in hand down Via Magnanapoli. The street was merely a staircase, leading to the Trajan Forum. On the last step he drew her to him and kissed her.
“Are you mad? You mustn’t kiss people in the street here.”
And they both laughed. One evening they had been spoken to by two policemen on the Lateran piazza for walking up and down under the pines along the old wall kissing each other.
The last sunrays brushed the bronze figures on top of the pillar and burned on the walls and on the treetops in the gardens. The piazza lay in the shade, with its old, rickety houses round the excavated forum below the street level.
Jenny and Helge leaned over the railing and tried to count the fat, lazy cats which had taken their abode among the stumps of pillars on the grass-covered plot. They seemed to revive a little as the twilight began to fall. A big red one which had been lying on the pedestal of the Trajan pillar stretched himself, sharpened his claws on the masonry, jumped down on to the grass, and ran away.
“I make it twenty-three,” said Helge.
“I counted twenty-five.” She turned round and dismissed a post card seller, who was recommending his wares in fragments of every possible language.
She leaned again over the railing and stared vaguely at the grass, giving way to the pleasant languor of a long sunny day and countless kisses out in the green Campagna. Helge held one of her hands on his arm and patted it—she moved it along his sleeve until it rested between both of his. Helge smiled happily.
“What is it, dear?”
“I am thinking of those Germans.” She laughed too—quietly and indifferently, as happy people do at trifles that do not concern them. They had passed the Forum in the morning and sat down a moment on the high pedestal of the Focas pillar, talking in whispers. Beneath them lay the crumbled ruins, gilded by the sun, and small black tourists rambled among the stones. A newly married German couple were walking by themselves, seeking solitude in the midst of the crowd of travellers. He was fair and ruddy of face, wore knickerbockers and carried a kodak, and read to his wife out of Baedeker. She was very young, plump, and dark, with the inherited stamp of hausfrau on her smooth, floury face. She sat down on a tumbled pillar, posing to her husband, who took a snapshot of her. And the two who sat above, under the Focas pillar, whispering of their love, laughed, heedless of the fact that they were sitting above the Forum Romanum.
“Are you hungry?” asked Helge.
“No; are you?”
“No—but do you know what I should like to do?”
“Well?”
“I should like to go home with you and have supper. What do you say to that?”
“Yes, of course.”
They walked home arm in arm through small side streets. In her dark staircase he drew her suddenly to him, and kissed her with such force and passion that her heart began to beat violently. She was afraid, and at the same time angry with herself for being so, and whispered in the dark: “My darling,” to prove to herself that she was calm.
“Wait a moment,” whispered Helge, when she was going to light the lamp, and he kissed her again. “Put on the geisha-dress; you look so sweet in it. I will sit on the balcony while you change.”
Jenny changed her dress in the dark; she put the kettle on and arranged the anemones and the almond sprigs before she called him in and lighted up.
He took her again in his arms and said:
“Oh, Jenny, you are so lovely. Everything about you is lovely; it is heavenly to be with you. I wish I could be with you always.”
She took his face between her two hands.
“Jenny—you wish it—that we could be always together?”
She looked into his beautiful brown eyes:
“Yes, Helge; I do.”
“Do you wish that this spring—our spring—never would end?”
“Yes—oh yes.” She threw herself suddenly into his arms and kissed him; her half-open lips and closed eyes begged
