“Have you seen them since?”
“No. They went to Rocca di Papa the same day, and they were still there when I left Rome.”
Jenny sat a while thinking.
“I thought she was all taken up with her work,” she said.
“Heggen told me she had finished the big picture of the gate, and that it was very good. She had begun several small ones too, but then she got married all of a sudden. I don’t know if they had been properly engaged even. And what about you, Jenny—you wrote you had begun a new picture?”
Jenny led him to the easel. The big canvas showed a street with a row of houses—offices and factories—in grey-green and brick-red colouring. To the right were some workshops; behind them rose the walls of some big houses against a rich blue sky, with a few departing rain clouds, leaden grey in colour, but shining white where the sun came through. There was a strong light on the shops and the wall, and on the young foliage of some trees in a yard. A few men, some wagons and fruit barrows stood about in the street.
“I don’t know much about it, but is it not very good? I think it is fine—it is beautiful.”
“When I was wandering about waiting for my own boy—after walking here so lonely and sad many a spring before—and saw the maples and the chestnuts opening out their tender leaves against the smoky houses and red walls under a golden spring sky, I wanted to paint it.”
“Where did you get the view?”
“Stenersgaten. You see, your father spoke about a picture of you as a boy, which he kept in his office. I went down there to have a look at it, and then I saw this view from his office window. They let me stand in the box factory next door to paint it, but I had to change it a bit—compose a little.”