Page:Undset - Jenny (1921).djvu/290

 place in Rome I revisited first of all—yesterday? I went to Montagnola and I found our names on the cactus leaf."

Jenny was sitting with clenched hands, very pale.

"You look exactly the same as then, and you have lived three years about which I don't know anything," said Helge gently. "I can scarcely realize that I am here with you again—it seems as if all that has happened since we parted here in Rome were not true. Yet you belong perhaps to somebody else now?"

Jenny did not answer.

"Are you engaged?" he asked quietly.

"No."

"Jenny"—Helge bent his head so that she could not see his face—"all these years I have been hoping—dreaming of winning you back. I have imagined that we should meet again some day and come to an understanding. You said I was the first man you had been fond of. Is my dream impossible?"

"Yes," she said.

"Heggen?"

She did not answer at once.

"I have always been jealous of Heggen," said Helge gently. "I thought he was the one, especially when I saw that you both lived here. So you are in love with each other?"

Jenny still did not answer.

"Do you love him?"

"Yes, but I will not marry him."

"Oh, I see," said Helge, in a hard voice.

"No." She bent her head, tired, smiling sadly: "I have done with love; I don't want to have anything more to do with it. I am tired, and I wish you would go, Helge."

But he did not move.

"I cannot realize now when I see you again that it is all over. I never would believe it. I have been thinking so much of it, I suppose it was my own fault. I was so timid, I never