And he told her.
She interrupted him in the middle. "Are you angry with me?" she asked in a low voice.
He shook his head in the negative, but he did not say anything further about it.
All she had intended saying to him, that she had not been able to do anything else, that Hans had found him out, that she had promised his mother and that she herself had been so extremely anxious about him, remained unsaid. It was not necessary. It was as if the past were dead and buried now, as if he had entirely forgotten it.
When he told the girl, who was listening with much interest, about the Riviera where he was going, something like a new pleasure in life seemed to creep into his heart again. Oh, all he wanted was to get away from his present surroundings. When he got to the Riviera everything would be better. He had not got an exact impression of what it would be like there; he had only half listened, no, he had not listened at all when his mother told him about the south, it had all been so immaterial to him. Now he felt himself that it was a good thing to take an interest in things again. He drew a deep breath.
"Are you going to send me a pretty picture post-card from there, too?" she asked.
"Of course, many." And then he laid his arm round her narrow shoulders and drew her towards him. And she let him draw her.
They stood in the public street, where the bushes that grew on both sides of it were already in bud and the elder was swelling with the first sap, and clung to each other.
"Come back quite well," she sobbed.
And he kissed her tenderly on her cheek: "Frida, I really have to thank you."