you are making it still worse by going about here all alone. I do think you ought to go somewhere else—somewhere a little less hopeless than this." He was looking at the dark plain and the rows of poplars losing themselves in the distance.
"Mrs. Schlessinger is so very kind," said Jenny evasively.
"Oh yes, good soul; I am sure she is." He smiled. "I think she suspects me of being the culprit."
"Probably," said Jenny, smiling too.
They walked on in silence. After a while Gunnar asked:
"How are you going to arrange matters? Have you made any plans as to the future?"
"I don't know yet. I suppose you mean about the child? I may leave it with Mrs. Schlessinger for a time; she would look after it all right, I dare say. Or I may get some one to adopt it; you know, such children are adopted sometimes. I might call myself Mrs. Winge and never mind what people think."
"You are quite decided, then, to break completely with—er—the man concerned? You wrote me to that effect."
"I am," she said firmly. "It is not the man I was engaged to," she added, after a pause.
"Thank God!" he burst out, so relieved that Jenny could not help smiling a little.
"Well, you know, Jenny, he was not worth reproducing—not by you anyway. I saw in the papers recently that he has got his doctor's degree. Well, it might have been worse—I was afraid …"
"It is his father," she said abruptly.
Heggen came to a dead stop. She fell to crying desperately, and he put his arm round her and laid his hand to her cheek while she went on sobbing with her head on his shoulder.
Standing so, she began to tell him all about it. Once she looked up at his face; it was pale and haggard; and she started
