"Of course. I am obliged to accept. They always need money at home, as you know. Besides, I must go abroad; it is not good for me to stay here long."
"Do you want to go abroad?" said Gram gently, looking down. "Well, I suppose you are; it is only natural."
"Oh, this exhibition," said Jenny, sitting down in the rocking-chair—"all my pictures were painted such a long time ago, it seems to me, even the recent ones. The sketch of the Aventine was finished the day I met Helge, and I painted the picture while we were together—that of Cesca as well. And the one from Stenersgaten in your place, while I was waiting for him to come home. I have done nothing since. Ugh! So Helge is at work again?"
"It is only natural, my dear, that an experience like yours should leave deeper traces in a woman."
"Oh yes, yes—a woman; that is the whole misery of it. It is just like a woman to become uninterested and utterly lazy because of a love that does not even exist."
"My dear Jenny," said Gram, "I think it quite natural that it should take some time for you to get over it—to get beyond it, as it were; one always does, and then one understands that the experience has not been in vain, but that one's soul is the richer for it in some way or other."
Jenny did not reply.
"I am sure there is much you would not like to have missed—all the happy, warm, sunny days with your friend in that beautiful country. Am I not right?"
"Will you tell me one thing, Gert?—is it your own personal experience that you have been able to enrich your soul, as you say, by the incidents of your life?"
He gave a start as if hurt and surprised at her brutality; it was a moment before he answered her:
"It is quite a different thing. The experiences which are the results of sin—I don't mean sin in the orthodox sense, but
