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 everyone 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;
