“Because you are so courageous and independent, and you have such decided opinions about everything. When you grow up in circumstances where it is a constant struggle to make ends meet, and you are always reminded of it, you sort of dare not form any opinions—in a general way—it is so tantalizing to know that the coins decide what you can afford to wish or to want.” Jenny nodded pensively. “Yes, but one must not feel like that when one has health and youth and knowledge.” “Well, take my case, for instance. I have always believed that I have some aptitude for scientific work, and it is the only thing I would like to do. I have written a few books—popular ones, you know—and I am now working at an essay on the Bronze Age in South Europe. But I am a teacher, and have a fairly good position—that of a superintendent of a private school.” “You have come out here to work, to study—I remember you said so this morning.” He did not answer, but continued: “It was the same thing with my father. He wanted to be an artist—wanted it more than anything else, and he came out here for a year. Then he married, and is now the owner of a lithographic press, which he has kept going for twenty-six years under great difficulties. I don’t believe my father thinks he has got much out of life.” Jenny Winge sat as before, looking thoughtfully in front of her. In the orchard below grew rows of vegetables, small innocent tufts of green on the grey soil, and on the far side of the meadow one could see the yellow masses of ruins on the Palatine against the dark foliage. The day promised to be warm. The Alban mountains in the distance, beyond the pines of the villa gardens, looked misty against the soft blue of the sky. Jenny drank some wine, still looking straight ahead. Helge followed with his eyes the smoke of her cigarette—a faint morning breeze carried it out in the sunshine. She sat with her legs crossed. She had small ankles, and her feet were clad in thin purple stockings and bead-embroidered evening shoes. The jacket was open over the gathered silver-grey dress with the white collar and the beads, which threw pink spots on her milky-white neck. The fur cap had slid back from her fair, fluffy hair. “I suppose you have the support of your father, though, Mr. Gram—I mean, he understands you, doesn’t he? Surely he sees that you can’t get ahead so quickly at that school, when you have quite different work at heart?”