At last, about ten o’clock Cesca came driving up the avenue; Jenny had gone to meet her, and the moment she sat down beside her in the cart she saw that something had happened, but neither of them said a word.
Later, when Francesca had had something to eat and they were having a cup of tea, she said quietly without looking at Jenny:
“Can you guess whom I met in town today?”
“Hans Hermann. He is on a visit at the island and living with a rich woman who seems to have taken him up.”
“No; they are divorced. I saw in the papers that they had lost their little boy in the spring. I am sorry for her”—and Cesca began to talk of other things.
When Jenny was in bed Cesca came quietly into her room, sitting down at the foot end of the bed and pulling her nightdress well over her feet. She sat with her arms folded round her knees, her little dark head making a black shadow on the curtain.
“Jenny, I am going home tomorrow. I will send a wire to Lennart early in the morning and leave in the afternoon. You must stay here as long as you like, and don’t think me very inconsiderate, but I dare not stay. I must go at once.” She was breathing heavily. “I cannot understand it, Jenny. I have seen him. He kissed me, and I did not strike him. I listened to all he had to say, and I did not strike him in the face as I ought to have done. I don’t care for him—I know that now—and yet he has power over me. I am afraid. I dare not stay, because I don’t know what he might make me do. When I think of him now I hate him, but when he speaks to me I seem to get petrified; and I could not believe that anybody could be so cynical, so brutal, so shameless.
“It seems as if he does not understand there is such a thing as honour or shame; they do not exist for him, and he does not believe that anybody else cares for them either. His point of view is that our talking of right and wrong is only speculation, and when I hear him speak I seem to get hypnotized. I have been with him all the afternoon, listening to his talk. He said that as I was married now I need not be so careful about my virtue any longer, or something to that effect, and he alluded to his being free again, so as to give me some hope, I suppose. He kissed me in the park and I wanted to scream, but could not make a sound. Oh, I was so afraid. He said he would come here the day after tomorrow—they were going to have a party tomorrow—and all the time he smiled at me with that same smile I was always so afraid of in the old days.