“Hush. You see I take it calmly. I suppose once you are in for it, it is not so bad as you imagine. Fortunately I have still some money left.” “But, Jenny, think of the people who will be unkind to you—look down on you.” “Nobody can do that. There is only one thing I am ashamed of, and it is that I allowed you to waste your love on me.” “Such foolish talk! You don’t know how heartless people can be; they will treat you unkindly, insult and hurt you.” “I don’t mind that very much, Gert.” She smiled vaguely. “Fortunately I am an artist; people expect a little scandal now and then from us.” He shook his head. In a sudden desperate regret at having told him and given him so much pain she took him in her arms: “My dear friend, you must not be so distressed—you see that I am not. On the contrary, I am sometimes quite happy about it. When I think that I am going to have a child—a sweet little child, my very own—I can scarcely believe it. I think it will be so great a happiness that I can hardly grasp it now. A little living being, to belong to me only, to love, to live and work for. I sometimes think that then only will my life and my work be of some purpose. Don’t you think I could make a name for myself good enough for the child too? It is only because I don’t know yet how to arrange it all that I am a little depressed sometimes, and also because you are so sad. “Perhaps I am poor and dull and an egoist, but I am a woman, and as such I cannot but be happy at the prospect of being a mother.” He kissed her hands: “My poor, brave girl! It makes it almost worse for me to see you take it that way.” Jenny smiled faintly: “Would it not be worse still if I took it in another way?” V Ten days later Jenny left for Copenhagen. Her mother and Bodil Berner saw her off at the station in the early morning. “You are a lucky one, Jenny!” said Bodil, smiling all over her little soft brown face. And she yawned till the tears came into her eyes. “Yes, some must be the lucky ones, I suppose. But I don’t think you have anything to complain of either,” said Jenny, smiling too; but she was several times on the point of bursting into tears when she kissed her mother farewell. Standing at the compartment window looking at her, it seemed as if she had not really seen her mother for ever so long. She took in with her eyes the slightly stooping, slender figure, the fair hair that scarcely seemed grey at all, and the strangely unaffected girlish expression of her face, despite its wrinkles. Only the years, not life, had made the furrows, in spite of all she had gone through.