“You have no right to say that, Mr. Gram. Not one year of one’s life is wasted, as long as you have not reached a point where suicide is the only way out. I don’t believe that the old generation, those from the time of the great illusions, were better off than we. The dreams of their youth stripped life bare for them. We young people, most of the ones I know, have started life without illusions. We were thrown into the struggle for existence almost before we were grown up, and from the first we have looked at life with open eyes, expecting the worst. And then one day we understood that we could manage to get something good out of it ourselves. Something happens, perhaps, that makes you think: if you can stand this, you can stand anything. Once you have got self-reliance in that way, there are no illusions that any one or anything can rob you of.” “But circumstances and opportunities may be such that one’s self-reliance is not much use when they are stronger than oneself.” “True,” she said. “When a ship sets sail, circumstances may cause it to be wrecked—a collision or a mistake in the construction of a wheel—but it does not start with that presumption. Besides, one must try and conquer circumstances; there is nearly always a way out of them.” “You are very optimistic, Miss Winge.” “I am,” she said, and after a while: “I have become an optimist since I have seen how much people really can stand without losing courage to struggle on, and without being degraded.” “That is exactly what I think they are—reduced in value, anyway.” “Not all. And even to find _one_ who does not allow life to abase or reduce him is enough to make you optimistic. We are going in here.” “This looks more like a Montmartre café, don’t you think?” said Helge, looking around. Along the walls of the small room were plush-covered forms; small iron tables with marble tops stood in front of them, and the steam rose from two nickel boilers on the counter. “These places are the same everywhere. Do you know Paris?” “No, but I thought....” He felt suddenly irritated with this young girl artist who went about the world as she pleased—and God knows where she got the money from. It seemed to her quite as natural for him to have been in Paris as in a restaurant in Christiania. It was easy for people like her to speak of self-reliance. An unhappy love affair in Paris, which she forgot in Rome, was probably the greatest of her trials, and made her feel so confident and brave and able to solve the questions of life. Her shape was almost scraggy, but the face was healthy and the colouring beautiful. He wished he could speak to Miss Jahrman, who was wide awake now, but she was engaged by Ahlin and Heggen. Miss Winge was eating a poached egg and bread and drinking hot milk. “The customers of this place look rather mysterious,” he said, turning to her. “Perfect criminal types, it seems to me.”