“Don’t think I would reproach you if there had been another—a young man—your equal; I could understand that easier.” “You don’t seem able to realize—I don’t think there need be another.” “Perhaps not. It seemed to me more likely, and, remembering what you wrote about Heggen being at Tegneby and going to Berlin....” Jenny blushed deeply: “How can you think that I would have—yesterday?” Gert was silent. Then he said wearily: “I cannot quite make you out.” She was suddenly seized by a wish to hurt him. “In a way it would not be wrong to say that there was another—a third person.” He looked at her searchingly, then clutched her arm all of a sudden: “Jenny—good God!—what do you mean?” But she regretted her words already, and said hurriedly: “Yes, my work—my art.” * * * * * Gert Gram had risen to his knees before her: “Jenny—is there anything—particular—tell me the truth—don’t lie to me—is there anything the matter with you?” She tried for a second to look him straight in the eyes, then bent her head. Gert Gram fell forward with his face in her lap. “O God!—O God!...” “Gert, dear, compose yourself. You irritated me with your talk about another. I ought not to have told you. I did not mean to let you know until afterwards.” “I would never have forgiven you for not telling me,” said Gram. “You must have known this some time. Do you know how...?” “Three months,” she answered shortly. “Jenny”—he seized her hands in awe—“you cannot break with me now—not in this way. We cannot part now.” “Oh yes.” She stroked his face caressingly. “If this had not happened I daresay we could still have been together some time, but now I must arrange my life accordingly, and make the best of it.” He was silent a moment. “Listen to me, little one. You know I was divorced last month. In two years’ time I shall be free, and then I will come to you to give you—and it—my name. I ask nothing from you, you understand—nothing—but I claim the right to give you the redress I owe you. God knows I shall suffer because it cannot be done before. Nothing else will I claim; you shall not be tied in the least to me—an old man.” “Gert, I am glad that you are separated from her, but I will tell you once and for all that I am not going to marry you when I cannot be your wife in truth. It is not because of the difference in age. If I did not feel that I have never wholly been yours, as I should have been, I would stay with you—your wife as long as you were young, your friend when old age came—even your nurse—willingly and happily. But I know I cannot be what a wife ought to be, and I cannot promise a thing I could not keep just because of what other people might say—church or civil contract, it makes no difference.” “It is madness, Jenny, to talk like that.” “You cannot make me change on that point,” she replied quietly. “What are you going to do, child? I cannot let you go now. What will happen to you?—you _must_ let me help you.”