Page:Undset - Jenny (1921).djvu/263

 "Why have you not gone to bed? You will be cold up here." He fetched her shawl from the summer-house and handed it to her, sitting down between the flower-pots on the top of the wall. They sat quietly staring at the city and the church domes that seemed floating in the moonlit mist. The outlines of distant hills were completely obliterated.

Jenny was smoking. Gunnar lit a cigarette.

"I can hardly stand anything now, it seems—in the way of drink, I mean. It affects me at once," she said apologetically.

He understood that she was quite herself again.

"I think you might leave it off altogether for a time, and not smoke—at least not so much. You know you have complained of your heart."

She did not answer.

"I know that you agree with me about those people, and I cannot think how you could condescend to associate with them—in the way you did."

"One is sometimes in need of—well, of a narcotic," she said quietly. "And as to condescending …" He looked into her white face; her fair fluffy hair shone in the moonlight. "Sometimes I think it does not matter, though now—at this moment—I feel ashamed, but then I am extraordinarily sober just now, you see," she said, smiling. "I am not always, although I have not taken anything, and in those moments I feel ready for any kind of revels."

"It is dangerous, Jenny," he said, and again after a pause: "I think it was disgusting tonight—I cannot call it anything else. I have seen something of life; I know what it leads to. I would not like to see you come down and end as something like Loulou."

"You can be quite easy in your mind about me, Gunnar. I am not going to end that way. I don't really like it, and I know where to stop."