some people who are happy. That feeling is something still left of my old self—even if there is nothing else."
Instead of going back to the city, they crossed the Piazza, walking in the direction of the church.
The shadows fell coal black on to the square in the moonlight. White light and night-black darkness played about ghostlike in one of the arcades. The other lay in complete obscurity but for the row of statues on top. The front of the church was in shadow, but here and there the dome glittered like water. The two fountains sent their white jets sparkling and foaming towards the moon-blue sky. The water rose whirling in the air, splashing down again to the porphyry shelves to drop and trickle back into the basin.
Gunnar and Jenny walked slowly in the shade of the arcade towards the church.
"Jenny," he said all of a sudden, in a perfectly cool and everyday voice, "will you marry me?"
"No," she answered after a pause, in a similar tone.
"I mean it."
"Yes, but surely you understand that I don't want to."
"I don't see why not. If I understood you rightly, you don't value your life very highly at present, and you entertain thoughts of suicide occasionally. As you feel so inconsolable in any case, why should you not marry me? I think you might try."
Jenny shook her head: "Thank you, Gunnar—but I think it would be taxing your friendship too heavily." She spoke in earnest. "In the first place, you ought to understand that I cannot accept it, and in the second that, if you could make me accept you as a last resource, it would not be worth your troubling to reach out one of your little fingers to save me."
"It is not friendship." He hesitated a little. "The truth is that I have got fond of you. It is not to save you—although I would do anything to help you, of course—but because I
