else—I can feel it lying in my hands. He was so round and fat, and every bit of him was so pretty—my own sweet little boy!
"But he died! I was looking forward so much to all that was going to happen that it seems to me now I did not pay enough attention to things when I had him, or kissed him or looked at him enough, though I did nothing else in those weeks.
"When he was gone there was nothing left but the yearning for him. You cannot understand what I felt. My whole body ached with it. I fell ill, and the fever and the pain seemed to be my longing materialized. I missed him from my arms, between my hands, and at my cheek. Once or twice in the last week of his life he clutched my finger when I put it in his hand. Once he had somehow got hold of a little of my hair—oh, the sweet, sweet little hands.…"
She lay prostrate over the table, sobbing violently, her whole form shivering.
Gunnar had got up and stood hesitating, emotion rising in his throat. Then he went to her and, bending down over her head, he touched her hair lightly with a shy, gentle kiss.
She continued crying, in the same position, for a little while. At last she got up and went to the washstand to bathe her face.
"Oh, how I miss him," she repeated, and he could not find anything to say but "Jenny, if I had known that you felt it so much."
She came back to where he was and, putting her hands on his shoulders, said:
"Gunnar, you must not pay any attention to what I said a while ago. Sometimes I am not quite myself, but you will understand that, for the sake of the boy, if for no other reason, I am not going to throw myself entirely into a life of dissipation. At heart I really want to make the best I can of my life
