So she moved from one widow to another, and into another small cottage—this time a red one with whitewashed windowsills and standing in a little garden with flagged paths and shells around the flower-beds, where the dahlias and chrysanthemums stood black and rotting. Twenty to thirty similar houses stood along a small street leading from the railway station to the fishing harbour, where the waves foamed against the long stone piers. On the beach, a little away from the village, stood a small hotel with the shutters up. Endless roads, with bare, straggling poplars bending in the wind, led out over interminable plains and swamps past small brick farms with a strip of garden front and a couple of haystacks at the back. Jenny walked along the road as far as she could manage, returning home to sit in her little room, which this time was overloaded with precious knick-knacks, coloured plaster casts of castles, and merry scenes at country inns in brass frames. She had not the strength to change her wet shoes even, but Mrs. Schlessinger took off the boots and stockings, talking all the time, exhorting her to keep up her courage, telling her about all the other young ladies she had had in the house—how So-and-so had married and was well off and happy now. When she had been there a month Mrs. Schlessinger came into her room one day, excited and beaming—a gentleman had come to see the young lady. Jenny was paralysed with fright, but managed at last to ask what he looked like. “Quite young,” said Mrs. Schlessinger, with a lurking smile—“and very nice looking.” It dawned upon her that it might be Gunnar, and she got up, but, suddenly changing her mind, wrapped herself up in a rug and sat down in the deepest of her armchairs. Mrs. Schlessinger departed, pleased to announce a visitor. Showing Gunnar into the room, she remained an instant smiling by the door before closing it. He squeezed her hand, almost hurting her, and greeted her with a beaming smile: “I thought I had better come up here to see what kind of a place you had settled on. It is rather a dull part of the world you have chosen, but it is healthy anyway.” He shook the water from his hat as he spoke. “You must have some tea and something to eat,” said Jenny, making a movement as if meaning to rise, but remained sitting, saying with a blush: “Do you mind ringing the bell?” Heggen ate with excellent appetite, talking all the while. He was delighted with Berlin; he had lived in a workmen’s quarter—the Moabit—and spoke with equal enthusiasm about the social democrats and the military, for “there is something grand and manly about it, and the one stimulates the other.” He had been over some great factories and had studied night life, having met a Norwegian engineer who was on his honeymoon and a Norwegian couple with two lovely daughters, who were dying to see a little vice at close quarters. They had been to National, Riche, and to Amorsaale, and the ladies had enjoyed it all immensely.