Joergen Malthe is the man I love; but apart from that he is a stranger to me. We do not think or feel alike. He has his world and I have mine. I should only be like a vampire to him. His work would be hateful to me before a month was past. All women in love are like Magna Wellmann. I shudder when I think of the big ugly room where he lives and works; the bare deal table, the dusty books, the trunk covered with a travelling rug, the dirty curtains and unpolished floor.
Who knows? Perhaps the sense of discomfort and poverty which came over me the day I visited his rooms was the chief reason why I never ventured to take the final step. He paced the carpetless floor and held forth interminably upon Brunelleschi's cupola. He sketched its form in the air with his hands, and all the time I was feeling in imagination their touch upon my head. Every word he spoke betrayed his passion, and yet he went on discussing this wretched dome—about which I cared as little as for the inkstains on his table.
I expressed my surprise that he could put up with such a room.
"But I get the sunshine," he said, blushing.
I am quite sure that he often stands at his window and builds the most superb palaces from the red-gold of the sunset sky, and marble bridges from the purple clouds at evening.
Big child that you are, how I love you!
But I will never, never start a home with you!
Well, surely one gardener can hardly suffice to poison the air of the place. If he is a nuisance I shall send him packing.
The man comes from a big estate. If he is content to cultivate my cabbage patch, it must be because, besides being very ugly, he has some undiscovered faults. But I really cannot undertake to make minute inquiries into the psychical qualities of Mr. Under-gardener Jensen.
His photograph was sent by a registry office, among many others. We examined them, Jeanne, Torp, and myself, with as deep an interest as though they had been fashion plates from Paris. To my silent amusement, I watched Torp unconsciously sniffing at each photograph as though she thought smells could be photographed, too.