never for a second had thought could possibly happen to me.'"
After a moment's silence Heggen said:
"Rossetti says—and you know he is a much better poet than painter:
"'Was that the landmark? What—the foolish well
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell.
(And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
The stations of my course should raise unsought,
As altarstone or ensigned citadel.
But lo! The path is missed, I must go back,
And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
That the same goal is still on the same track.'"
Jenny said nothing—and Gunnar repeated: "That the same goal is still on the same track."
"Do you think it is easy to find the track to the goal again?" asked Jenny.
"No, but ought one not to try?" he said, almost in a childish way.
"But what goal did I have at all?" she said, with sudden vehemence. "I wanted to live in such a way that I need never be ashamed of myself either as a woman or as an artist. Never to do a thing I did not think right myself. I wanted to be upright, firm, and good, and never to have any one else's sorrow on my conscience. And what was the origin of the wrong—the cause of it all? It was that I yearned for love without there being any particular man whose love I wanted. Was there anything strange in it, or that I wanted to believe that Helge, when he came, was the one I had been longing for—
