“One is sometimes in need of—well, of a narcotic,” she said quietly. “And as to condescending....” He looked into her white face; her fair fluffy hair shone in the moonlight. “Sometimes I think it does not matter, though now—at this moment—I feel ashamed, but then I am extraordinarily sober just now, you see,” she said, smiling. “I am not always, although I have not taken anything, and in those moments I feel ready for any kind of revels.”
“It is dangerous, Jenny,” he said, and again after a pause: “I think it was disgusting tonight—I cannot call it anything else. I have seen something of life; I know what it leads to. I would not like to see you come down and end as something like Loulou.”
“You can be quite easy in your mind about me, Gunnar. I am not going to end that way. I don’t really like it, and I know where to stop.”
“I know what you mean,” he said at last. “Other women have thought as you, but when one has been gliding downward for a time one ceases to care about where to stop, as you call it.” Stepping down from the wall, he went towards her and took her hand:
“Jenny, you will stop now, will you not?”
“For the present, anyway. I think I am cured for a long time of that sort of thing.” She shook his hand firmly: “Good-night; I’ll sit for you in the morning,” she said, going down the stairs.
He remained on the roof for some time smoking, shivering a little, and thinking, before going down to his room.
Next day she sat to him after lunch until it grew dark; in the rests, they exchanged some insignificant words while he went on painting the background or washed his brushes.
“There,” he said, putting down the palette and tidying up his paint-box. “That will do for today.”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it is very effective.”
“It is almost time to go out and get something to eat—shall we dine together?”
“All right. Will you wait for me while I put on my things?”
A moment later when he knocked at her door she was ready, standing before the glass to fasten her hat.
How good looking she was, he thought, when she turned round. Slim and fair in her tight-fitting steel-grey dress, she looked very ladylike—discreet, cold, and stylish. What he had thought of her yesterday seemed quite impossible today.