“How nice of you to play to us, Gert. Don’t you think my husband plays beautifully, Miss Winge? Has he played to you before?” she asked innocently.
Jenny shook her head: “I did not know that Mr. Gram played the piano.”
“What a beautiful worker you are.” She looked at Jenny’s embroidery. “I thought you artists did not condescend to do needlework. It is a lovely pattern—where did you get it? Abroad, I suppose?”
“Oh well, then it is easy to get nice patterns. Have you seen this, Aagot? Isn’t it pretty? You are very clever”—and she patted Jenny’s hand.
What loathsome hands she had, thought Jenny—small, short fingers, with nails broader than long, and splayed out wide.
Helge and Jenny saw Aagot to her rooms and walked slowly down Pilestaedet in the pale night of June. The chestnuts in bloom along the hospital wall smelt strongly after the afternoon shower.
“Helge,” said Jenny, “you must try and arrange so that we need not go with them the day after tomorrow.”
“It is impossible. They have asked you and you have accepted. It is for your sake they have arranged this picnic.”
“But can you not understand how miserable it will be? I wish we could go alone somewhere, you and I, as in Rome.”
“There is nothing I would like better, but if we refuse to be a party to their midsummer outing it will only make things more unpleasant at home.”
“Not more than usual, I suppose,” she said scornfully.
“Yes, much more. Can you not put up with it for my sake? Hang it all, _you_ are not obliged to be in the midst of it always, or to live and work there!”
He was right, she thought, and reproached herself for not being patient enough. He, poor boy, had to live and work in a home she could scarcely endure for two hours. He had grown up in it and lived his whole youth in it.
“I am horrid and selfish, Helge.” She clung to him, tired, worried, and humiliated. She longed for him to kiss her and comfort her. What did it really matter to them? They had each other, and belonged somewhere far away from the air of hatred, suspicion, and anger in his home.
The scent of jessamine was wafted from the old gardens that still remained.
“We can go off by ourselves another day—just you and I,” he said, to comfort her. “But how could you be so silly?” he said suddenly. “I cannot understand it. You ought to have known that mother would get to know it—as sure as anything.”