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 wasn't it, to go away with Borghild and leave the house to me and Jenny? Old Gina looks after us, and is ready to stand on her head for us. I call it perfectly lovely."

"It is delightful to see you again, you two."

He laughed and chatted with them, but Jenny imagined she noticed a touch of sadness behind his merry talk. She knew that she looked worn and tired herself, and Cesca in her cheap, ready-made costume looked like a tomboy beginning to get old without having been properly grown up. Cesca seemed to have shrunk very much in the one year they had been separated, but she chatted on as before, telling them what they were going to have for dinner, that they would have coffee in the garden, and that she had bought liqueurs and whisky and soda to celebrate the occasion of their visit.

That night, when Jenny came into her bedroom, she sat down on the window-seat to cool her face in the fresh breeze made by the fluttering curtain. She was not sober; it was an extraordinary thing, but it was a fact. She could not understand how it had happened; all she had had was one glass and a half of toddy and a couple of small liqueurs after supper. True, she had not eaten much, but she had no appetite lately. She had had strong coffee, so perhaps it was that and the cigarettes which affected her, although she smoked much less now than she used to.

Her heart beat irregularly, and hot waves were rushing over her till she felt moist all over. The landscape she was looking at from the window, the greyish fields, the soft coloured flower-beds in the garden, and the dark trees against the pale summer sky turned and twisted before her eyes, and the room seemed turning round. A taste of whisky and liqueur rose to her throat. How horrid!

She spilt the water when she poured some in the basin, and she felt unsteady on her feet. Jenny mia, this is scandalous. You will soon be done for, my girl, if you cannot stand that