Helge was not hungry. The sour white wine gave him heartburn, and he could scarcely swallow the dry, unsalted bread, but Jenny bit off great chunks with her white teeth, put small pieces of Parmesan in her mouth, and drank wine. The three eggs were already done with.
"How can you eat that nasty bread without butter?" said Helge.
"I like it. I have not tasted butter since I left Christiania. Cesca and I buy it only when we are having a party. We have to live very economically, you see."
He laughed, saying: "What do you call economy—beads and corals?"
"No; it is luxury, but I think it is very essential—a little of it. We live cheaply and we eat cheaply, tea and dry bread and radishes twice or three times a week for supper—and we buy silk scarves."
She had finished eating, lit a cigarette, and sat looking in front of her, with her chin resting on her hand:
"To starve, you see, Mr. Gram—of course I have not tried it yet, but I may have to. Heggen has, and he thinks as I do—to starve or to have too little of the necessary is better than never to have any of the superfluous. The superfluous is the very thing we work and long for. At home, with my mother, we always had the strictly necessary, but everything beyond it was not to be thought of. It had to be—the children had to be fed before anything else."
"I cannot think of you as ever having been troubled about money."
"Why not?"
"Because you are so courageous and independent, and you have such decided opinions about everything. When you grow up in circumstances where it is a constant struggle to make ends meet, and you are always reminded of it, you sort of dare not form any opinions—in a general way—it is so tantalizing to
