How good looking she was, he thought, when she turned round. Slim and fair in her tight-fitting steel-grey dress, she looked very ladylike—discreet, cold, and stylish. What he had thought of her yesterday seemed quite impossible today.
"Did you not promise to go to Miss Schulin this afternoon to see her paintings?"
"Yes, but I am not going." She blushed. "Honestly I don't care to encourage an acquaintance with her, and I suppose there is not much in her paintings either."
"I should not think so. I cannot understand your putting up with her advances last night. Personally, I would rather do anything—eat a plateful of live worms."
Jenny smiled, and said seriously:
"Poor thing, I daresay she is not happy at all."
"Pooh! not happy. I met her in Paris in 1905. I don't think she is perverse by nature—only stupid and full of vanity. It was all put on. If it were the fashion now to be virtuous she would sit up darning children's stockings, and would have been the best of housewives. Possibly painting roses with dewdrops on as a recreation. But once she got away from her moorings she wanted to see life—free as an artist, she thought she ought to get herself a lover for the sake of her self-respect. But unfortunately she got hold of a duffer who was old-fashioned enough to want her to marry him in the old non-modern way when things had gone wrong, and expected her to look after the child and the house."
"It may be Paulsen's fault that she ran away—you never know."
"Of course it was his fault. He was of the old school, wanting happiness in his home, and he gave her probably too little love and still less cudgelling."
Jenny smiled sadly:
"I know, Gunnar, that you believe life's difficulties are easily solved."
