golden stars, and the ski scrape and sing on the icy crust of the snow. We may be able to go there together yet this spring."
"Yes, yes—but I have been to all these places—Vester Aker, Nordmarken—so often alone that I dread them. It seems to me almost as if fragments of my old discarded souls were hanging on every shrub up there."
"Hush, hush, dear. I should love to go there with my dearest friend, after being there alone and sad so many a spring."
They wandered hand in hand in the green Campagna—the haze had risen towards evening, and a slight breeze blew in their direction. From the road came the creaking of hay-carts, pulled by white oxen, and the tinkling of bells on the red harness of mules in front of blue vinecarts.
Jenny looked tenderly at everything, bidding farewell in her mind to all the things she knew so well, and that were so dear to her. She had seen it all day after day with him, without knowing she had noticed it, and now suddenly she understood that it was all imprinted in her mind together with the memories of those happy days: here was the slope, where the short grass had grown softer and greener from day to day, and the faithful daisies in the meagre soil; the thorny hedges along the roads and the rich green leaves of the calla under the bushes; the unceasing warble of the larks in the sky, and the innumerable concertinas that played to the dancers in the osterias on the plain—concertinas with the peculiar, glassy sound, for ever playing the same short Italian tunes. Why must she leave it all now?
The wind chilled her like a bath, till her body felt like a cool rich leaf, and she longed to give it to him.
They said good-bye for the last time at her door, and they could not part.
