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 "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.