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.
“Goodbye, 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
