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 Gert nodded assent. They were sitting on the sofa close together, Jenny's head resting on his shoulder, so that she could not see his face.

"I was in the country this morning, walking where we used to go together. Let us go there again soon—the day after tomorrow if it is fine—will you? You are sorry because I have to go home so early today, are you not?"

"My dear, have I not said that thousands of times already?" She could hear from his voice that he was saying this with his melancholy smile again. "I am grateful for every second of your life that you give me."

"Don't speak like that, Gert," she said, pained.

"Why should I not say it when it is true? Dearest little girl, do you think I will ever forget that all you have given me is as a princely grace, and I can never understand how you came to give it to me at all?"

"When I realized last winter that you were fond of me—how much you really loved me—I said to myself it must stop. But then I understood that I could not be without you, and so I gave myself to you. Was that a grace? When I could not let you go?"

"I call it an inconceivable grace that you ever came to love me."

She nestled in his arms without speaking.

"My own darling … so young and sweet you are.…"

"I am not young, Gert. When you met me I was already beginning to get old without ever having been young. You seemed young to me, much younger at heart than I, because you still believed in what I called childish dreams and used to laugh at them. You have made me believe in love and tenderness and all such things."

Gert Gram smiled, and whispered: "Perhaps my heart was not older than yours—for it seemed to me that I had never yet had any youth, and deep down in my soul I still entertained the