Suddenly Jenny spoke in a hard and scornful voice:
“I know you mean it kindly, Gunnar. It is good of you to try and take care of me, but it is not worth while.”
He walked on in silence.
“No, not if you have no will of your own,” he said after a while.
“Will”—imitating him.
“Yes; I said will.”
Her breath came quick and sharp, as if she wanted to answer, but she checked herself. She was suddenly filled with disgust—she knew that she was half drunk, but she would not accentuate it by beginning to shout, moan, and explain—perhaps cry, before Gunnar. She set her teeth.
They reached their own entrance. Heggen opened the door and struck a match to light her up the endless flight of dark stone steps. Their two small rooms were on the half-landing at the end of the stairs; a small passage outside their doors ended in a marble staircase leading to the flat roof of the house.
At her door she shook hands with him, saying in a low voice:
“Good night, Gunnar—thanks for tonight.”
“Thank you. Sleep well.”
“Same to you.”
Gunnar opened the window in his room. The moon shone on an ochre-yellow wall opposite, with closed shutters and black iron balconies. Behind it rose Pincio, with sharply outlined dark masses of foliage against the blue moonlit sky. Below him were old moss-covered roofs, and where the dark shadow of the house ended some washing was hung out to dry on a terrace farther down. He was leaning on the windowsill, disgusted and sad. He was not very particular in general, but to see Jenny in such a state. Ugh! And it was more or less his own fault; she had been so melancholy the first months of her return—like a wounded bird—and to cheer her up a little he had persuaded her to join the party, thinking of course that he and she would amuse themselves by watching the others only, never for a moment suspecting that it would have such an effect on her. He heard her come out from her room and go on to the roof. He hesitated a moment, then followed her.
She was sitting in the only chair, behind the little corrugated-iron summerhouse. The pigeons cooed sleepily in the dovecot above.
“Why have you not gone to bed? You will be cold up here.” He fetched her shawl from the summerhouse and handed it to her, sitting down between the flowerpots on the top of the wall. They sat quietly staring at the city and the church domes that seemed floating in the moonlit mist. The outlines of distant hills were completely obliterated.
Jenny was smoking. Gunnar lit a cigarette.
“I can hardly stand anything now, it seems—in the way of drink, I mean. It affects me at once,” she said apologetically.
He understood that she was quite herself again.
“I think you might leave it off altogether for a time, and not smoke—at least not so much. You know you have complained of your heart.”
She did not answer.
“I know that you agree with me about those people, and I cannot think how you could condescend to associate with them—in the way you did.”
“One is sometimes in need of—well, of a narcotic,” she said quietly. “And as to condescending. …” He looked into her white face; her fair fluffy hair shone in the moonlight. “Sometimes I think it does not matter, though now—at this moment—I feel ashamed, but then I am extraordinarily sober just now, you see,” she said, smiling. “I am not always, although I have not taken anything, and in those moments I feel ready for any kind of revels.”
“It is dangerous, Jenny,” he said, and again after a pause: “I think it was disgusting tonight—I cannot call it anything else. I have seen something of life; I know what it leads to. I would not like to see you come down and end as something like Loulou.”
“You can be quite easy in your mind about me, Gunnar. I am not going to end that way. I don’t really like it, and I know where to stop.”
He sat looking at her.
“I know what you mean,” he said at last. “Other women have thought as you, but when one has been gliding downward for a time one ceases to care about where to stop, as you call it.” Stepping down from the wall, he went towards her and took her hand:
“Jenny, you will stop now, will you not?”
She rose, smiling:
“For the present, anyway. I think I am cured for a long time of that sort of thing.” She shook his hand firmly: “Good night; I’ll sit for you in the morning,” she said, going down the stairs.
“All right, thanks.”
He remained on the roof for some time smoking, shivering a little, and thinking, before going down to his room.
IX
Next day she sat to him after lunch until it grew dark; in the rests, they exchanged some insignificant words while he went on painting the background or washed his brushes.
“There,” he said, putting down the palette and tidying up his paintbox. “That will do for today.”
She came to look at the picture.
“The black is good, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is very effective.”
He looked at his watch:
“It is almost time to go out and get something to eat—shall we dine together?”
“All right. Will you wait for me while I put on my things?”
A moment later when he knocked at her door she was ready, standing before the glass to fasten her hat.
How good looking she was, he thought, when she turned round. Slim and fair in her tight-fitting steel-grey dress, she looked very ladylike—discreet, cold, and stylish. What he had thought of her yesterday seemed quite impossible today.
“Did you not promise to go to Miss Schulin this afternoon to see her paintings?”
“Yes, but I am not going.” She blushed. “Honestly I don’t care to encourage an acquaintance with her, and I suppose there is not much in her
