All of a sudden it seemed so silly of me to make a fuss, and I put my arms round his neck and said: 'I want to be yours, for I love you.'"
Cesca was silent a second, taking a deep breath.
"Oh, Jenny—how happy he was, poor boy!" She swallowed her tears. "He was so pleased. 'Now?' said he—'here?' and took me in his arms, but I resisted. I don't know really why I did it. It would have been beautiful in the deep forest and the sunshine.
"He rushed out and stayed away all night. I lay awake. I was anxious, wondering what he had done, where he had gone. Next day we went back to Rome and stayed at an hotel. Lennart had taken two rooms. I went to him in his room—but there was no beauty in it. We have never been quite happy since. I know that I have offended him frightfully, but tell me, Jenny, if you think it a thing a man never can forget or forgive?"
"He ought to have realized afterwards that you did not understand what it was you were doing—how it would hurt him."
"No." Cesca was shivering. "But I do now. I see that it was something pure and beautiful that I soiled, but I did not understand it then. Jenny, do you think a man's love could ever get over that?"
"It ought to. You have proved since that you want to be a good and faithful wife to him. Last winter you worked so hard and suffered without complaining, and in the spring when he was ill you nursed him week after week, watching night after night by his bedside."
"That is nothing to speak of," said Cesca eagerly. "He was so good and patient, and he helped me in the house as much as he could. When he was ill some of our friends came sometimes to help me to sit up with him in the night. That
