“I don’t know. Are we not always dependent on what we love?—you and your work, for instance. And when once you get really fond of people,” he said quietly, “you make yourself dependent on them for good and all.”
“Ye—s”—she reflected a moment, then said suddenly, “but it is your own choice. You are not a slave; you serve willingly something or somebody that you prize higher than yourself. Are you not glad you can begin the new year alone, entirely free, and only do the work you like?”
Helge remembered the previous evening in the piazza San Pietro; he looked at the city, the soft veiled colourings of it in the sun, and he looked at the fair young girl beside him.
“Well”—she rose, buttoned her jacket, and opened the paint-box—“I must work now.”
“And I suppose you would like to get rid of me?”
Jenny smiled. “I daresay you are tired too.”
She called the woman and helped him, squeezing out colours on to her palette meanwhile.
“Do you think you can find your way back to town?”
“Yes; I remember exactly how we came, and I shall soon find a cab, I suppose. Do you ever go to the club?”
“I should like very much to meet you again.”
“I daresay you will”—and after a moment’s hesitation:
“Come and see us one day, if you care, and have tea. Via Vantaggio 111. Cesca and I are generally at home in the afternoon.”
“Thanks, I should like to very much. Good-bye, then, and thanks so much.”
She gave him her hand: “The same to you.”
At the gate he looked back; she was scraping her canvas with a palette knife and humming the song they had heard in the café. He remembered the tune, and began to hum it himself as he walked away.
Jenny brought her arms out from under the blanket and put them behind her neck. It was icy cold in the room, and dark. No ray of light came through the shutters. She struck a match and looked at her watch—it was nearly seven. She could doze a little longer, and she crept down under the blankets again, with her head deep in the pillow.
“Jenny, are you asleep?” Francesca opened the door without knocking, and came close to the bed. She felt for her friend’s face in the dark and stroked it. “Tired?”
“About three o’clock. I went to Prati for a bath before lunch and ate at the Ripetta, you know, and when I came home I went to bed at once. I am thoroughly rested. I’ll get up now.”