“When he was gone there was nothing left but the yearning for him. You cannot understand what I felt. My whole body ached with it. I fell ill, and the fever and the pain seemed to be my longing materialized. I missed him from my arms, between my hands, and at my cheek. Once or twice in the last week of his life he clutched my finger when I put it in his hand. Once he had somehow got hold of a little of my hair—oh, the sweet, sweet little hands....” She lay prostrate over the table, sobbing violently, her whole form shivering. Gunnar had got up and stood hesitating, emotion rising in his throat. Then he went to her and, bending down over her head, he touched her hair lightly with a shy, gentle kiss. She continued crying, in the same position, for a little while. At last she got up and went to the washstand to bathe her face. “Oh, how I miss him,” she repeated, and he could not find anything to say but “Jenny, if I had known that you felt it so much.” She came back to where he was and, putting her hands on his shoulders, said: “Gunnar, you must not pay any attention to what I said a while ago. Sometimes I am not quite myself, but you will understand that, for the sake of the boy, if for no other reason, I am not going to throw myself entirely into a life of dissipation. At heart I really want to make the best I can of my life—you know that. I mean to try and work again, even if the result is poor in the beginning. I have always the comfort of knowing that one need not live longer than one cares to.” She put on her hat again, finding a veil for her tear-stained face: “Let us go and have something to eat—you must be starving by this time—it is very late.” Gunnar Heggen blushed all over his face. Now she mentioned it, he felt awfully hungry, and was ashamed of himself for admitting it at such a moment as this. He dried the tears from his wet, hot cheeks and took his hat from the table. X By tacit agreement they passed the restaurant where they usually had their meals and where there were always a number of their countrymen, and, continuing their way in the twilight towards the Tiber, they crossed the bridge into the old Borgo quarters. In a corner by the Piazza San Pietro there was a small _trattoria_ where they had dined after going to the Vatican, and they went there. They ate in silence. When she had finished Jenny lit a cigarette, and sat sipping her claret and rubbing her fingers with the fragrant tangerine peel. Heggen smoked, staring in front of him. They were almost alone in the place. “Would you like to read a letter I got from Cesca the other day?” asked Jenny suddenly. “Yes. I saw there was a letter for you from her—from Stockholm, is it not?” “Yes; they are back there and going to stay the winter.” Jenny took the letter out of her bag and handed it to him.