“I know, Gunnar, that you believe life’s difficulties are easily solved.” Heggen sat down astride on a chair with his arms on the back. “There is so much of life that we don’t know anything about, that what we know is easy enough to manage. Have to make your aims and dreams accordingly, and tackle the unexpected as best you can.” Jenny sat down in the sofa, resting her head in her hands: “I can no longer feel that there is anything in life I am so sure about that I could make it a foundation for my judgment or the aim of my exertions,” she said placidly. “I don’t think you mean it.” She only smiled. “Not always,” said Gunnar. “I suppose there is nobody who means the same thing always.” “Yes, always when one is sober. You were right last night in saying that sometimes one isn’t sober even if one hasn’t been drinking.” “At present—when I am sober once in a while, I——” She broke off and remained silent. “You know what I think about life, and I know you have always thought the same. What happens to you is, on the whole, the result of your own will. As a rule, you are the maker of your own fate. Now and then there are circumstances which you cannot master, but it is a colossal exaggeration to say it happens often.” “God knows I did not will my fate, Gunnar. Yet I have willed for many years and lived accordingly, too.” Both were quiet a moment. “One day,” she said slowly, “I changed my course an instant. I found it so severe and hard to live the life I considered the most worthy—so lonely, you see. I left the road for a bit, wanting to be young and to play, and thus came into a current that carried me away, ending in something I never for a second had thought could possibly happen to me.” After a moment’s silence Heggen said: “Rossetti says—and you know he is a much better poet than painter: “‘Was that the landmark? What—the foolish well Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell. (And mine own image, had I noted well!)— Was that my point of turning?—I had thought The stations of my course should raise unsought, As altarstone or ensigned citadel. But lo! The path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained, which since may have grown black. Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I’ll thank God, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track.’” Jenny said nothing—and Gunnar repeated: “That the same goal is still on the same track.” “Do you think it is easy to find the track to the goal again?” asked Jenny. “No, but ought one not to try?” he said, almost in a childish way.