“To me it seems now that it has never been different,” he said gently. “I love you and you need me. I know I can make you happy again, and when I have done that you will have made me happy.” Jenny shook her head: “If I had the least bit of faith in myself left, it would be different. I might have listened to you if I had not felt so keenly that I have done with life. You say you love me, but I know that what you think you love in me is destroyed—dead. It is the same old story: you are in love with some quality you dream that I possess—that I have before or might have acquired. But one day you would see me as I really am, and I should only have made you unhappy too.” “I should never look upon it as unhappiness whatever my fate might be. You may not be aware of it yourself, but I know that in the state you are now it only needs a touch for you to fall—into something that would be madness. But I love you, and I can see all the way that has led you to it, and if you feel I would follow you to try and carry you back in my arms, because I love you in spite of all.” As they stood by their doors in the dark passage he took her hands: “Jenny, rather than be alone, would you not like me to remain with you tonight?” She looked at him with a curious smile. “Oh, Jenny!” He shook his head. “I may come to you, all the same. Would you be angry—or sorry?” “I think I should be sorry—for your sake. No, do not come, Gunnar. I will not take your love when I know I could just as well give mine to anybody else.” He laughed a little, half angrily, half sadly. “Then I ought to do it. If once you were mine you would never belong to anybody else—I know you too well for that—but as you ask me not to, I will wait:” he added, with the same curious little laugh. XI All day long the weather had been bad, with cold, pale clouds high up in the sky; towards evening some thin brass-yellow stripes appeared on the western horizon. Jenny had been up to Monte Celio to sketch in the afternoon, but it did not come to much—she had been sitting listlessly on the big stairs outside of San Gregorio, looking down into the grove where the big trees were beginning to bud and daisies shone all over the grass. She came back through the avenue below the south side of the Palatine. The ruins showed dull grey against the palms of the convent on the mountain-top; the evergreen shrubs hung on the slope, powdered with chalky dust. Some shivering postcard-sellers loitered about outside the Constantin arch on the Piazza, where the ruins of the Colosseum, the Palatine, and the Forum lay. Very few tourists were about; a couple of skinny old ladies bargained in vile Italian with a mosaic pedlar.