Erik was cleaning up his studio, and as they were strolling by the water, the maid came out with an apronful of refuse which she threw on the beach. There was a litter of old brushes, fragments of casts, broken palette knives, bits of oil bottles, and empty paint tubes. Niels poked the heap with his foot, and Fennimore looked on with the vague curiosity people often feel in turning over old rubbish. Suddenly Niels drew his foot away as if something had burned it, but caught himself as quickly, and gave the pile another kick.
“Oh, let me see it,” begged Fennimore, and put her hand on his arm as if to stop him. He bent down and pulled out a plaster cast of a hand holding an egg.
“It must be a mistake,” he said.
“Why no, it is broken,” she replied quietly, as she took it from him. “See, the forefinger is gone,” she added, pointing, but when she suddenly became aware that the egg had been cut in two and a yolk painted inside it with chrome yellow, she blushed, and, bending down, she slowly and deliberately knocked the hand against a stone, until it was broken into little bits.
“Do you remember the time it was cast?” Niels asked, in order to say something.
“I remember that my hand was smeared with green soap so the plaster should not stick to it. Is that what you were thinking of?”
“No, I mean the time when Erik passed the cast around at the tea-table. Don’t you remember, when it came to your old aunt, how her eyes filled with tears, and she embraced you with the deepest compassion and kissed you on the brow, as if some harm had been done to you?”
“Yes, people are so sensitive.”
“No, we all laughed at her, but there was a delicacy in it nevertheless, although it was so nonsensical.”
“Yes, there is much of that nonsensical delicacy in the world.”