"Marriage!" repeated Astrid almost dazed, "what marriage?"
"Ragna's marriage. What do you know of this Valentini person, this, this—"
"Valentini!" exclaimed Astrid, still amazed, but with a note of comprehension in her voice. "Ragna has married Valentini?"
"You knew him then?"
"Why, yes," said Astrid seating herself on the chair Ingeborg set for her. "We both knew him, he was our drawing master in Florence."
"A drawing master! My niece marry a drawing master! My niece!"
"But Fru Boyesen, he is not just a drawing master, he is an artist."
Now this conveyed absolutely nothing to the elder woman's mind. She considered artists a sort of licensed and decorative charlatans, a long-haired and casual fraternity, the froth rising to the surface of the solid and respectable mass of society, all very well in their place, no doubt, but to be kept at a discreet distance; beings as much outside the orbit of ordinary existence as the Milky Way or a handful of wandering meteors. To her mind Ragna might as well have married a peddler or an acrobat.
"An artist!" she repeated scornfully, flicking the letter with outraged fingers. "And she wastes six sheets of good paper in explanations that explain nothing!"
Astrid, glad to turn the point of the conversation, said,