“Don’t speak like that, Gert,” she said, pained.
“Why should I not say it when it is true? Dearest little girl, do you think I will ever forget that all you have given me is as a princely grace, and I can never understand how you came to give it to me at all?”
“When I realized last winter that you were fond of me—how much you really loved me—I said to myself it must stop. But then I understood that I could not be without you, and so I gave myself to you. Was that a grace? When I could not let you go?”
“I call it an inconceivable grace that you ever came to love me.”
She nestled in his arms without speaking.
“My own darling ... so young and sweet you are....”
“I am not young, Gert. When you met me I was already beginning to get old without ever having been young. You seemed young to me, much younger at heart than I, because you still believed in what I called childish dreams and used to laugh at them. You have made me believe in love and tenderness and all such things.”
Gert Gram smiled, and whispered: “Perhaps my heart was not older than yours—for it seemed to me that I had never yet had any youth, and deep down in my soul I still entertained the hope that some day youth would touch me, if only for once, with his wand. But my hair has turned white meanwhile.”
Jenny raised her head and laid her hand caressingly on his head.
“Are you tired, little one? Shall I take off your shoes? Will you not lie down and rest?”
“No, let me stay as I am; it is nicer so.”
She drew her feet up under her and nestled closer in his lap. He laid one arm about her, and with the other hand he poured out some wine, holding the glass to her lips. She drank readily. He dropped cherries into her mouth and took the stones from her lips, putting them on the plate.
“Thanks. I think I will stay with you. I can send a message home to say I have met Heggen—I believe he is in town—but I must go home before the trams stop.”
“I’ll go and see about it now.” He let her down gently on the sofa. “Lie still there and rest, little one.”
When he was gone she took off her shoes, drank some more wine, and lay down on the sofa with her head deep in the cushions, pulling a rug over herself.
After all, she loved him, and was glad to be with him. Sitting as she had been a moment ago, resting in his arms, she was happy. He was the only one in the world who had taken her on his knee, warming her and hiding her and calling her his little girl. He was the only being who had stood by her really—so why should she not be close to him?