Her dinner did not take long. She tried to read a paper to divert her mind for a moment, but it was no 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.