Stepping back into bed, a thought suddenly struck her. Nonsense! She lay down again, pressing her neck deep into the pillows. It was impossible. She did not want to think of it, but, unable to dismiss the thought from her mind, she began a review of recent events. She had not felt quite well lately, had been tired and worn out, worried and nervous generally; that was probably why the little she had taken last night had been too much for her. She could quite understand now that people become abstemious after a few nights of the kind she had just experienced. The other matter she would not consider; if things had gone wrong she would know it in due time—it was no good worrying unnecessarily. She was going to sleep; she was so tired—but she could not keep her thoughts away from that awful subject—ugh!
At the beginning of their relations the possibility of consequences had quite naturally presented itself to her mind, and once or twice she had been in the throes of anxiety, but she had been able to master it and had forced herself to look reasonably at the matter. What if it were true? The dread of having a child is really a senseless superstition; it happens every day. Why should it be worse for her than for any poor working girl, who was able to provide for herself and her child? The anxiety was a remnant from the times when an unmarried woman in similar circumstances had to go to the father or her relations and confess that she had had a good time, and that they had to pay the expenses—with the sad prospect of never afterwards having her provided for by somebody else—a quite sufficient reason for their anger.
Nobody had any right to be angry with her. Her mother would, of course, be sorry, but when a grown-up person tried to live according to his conscience the parents had nothing to say. She had tried to help her mother as much as possible, she had never worried her with her own troubles, her reputation had never been spoilt by any tales of levity, flirtation, or revelling, but where her own opinions about right and wrong differed from that of other people, she meant to follow them, even if it would be painful to her mother to hear disagreeable things said about her.
If her relations with Gert were a sin, it did not mean that she had given too much, but too little, and whatever the consequences would be, she had to bear them without complaint.
She could provide for a child just as well as many a girl who had not a tenth part of her knowledge. There was still some money left of her inheritance—enough for her to go abroad. If the profession she had chosen was a poor one, she knew that several of her fellow-artists were able to keep wife and children with it, and she had been used to helping others from the time she was almost a child. She would, of course, prefer not to have to do it; so far everything had been all right—she would not think of it.
Gert would be in despair.
If it was true, how dreadful that it should happen now. If it had happened when she loved him, or thought she did, and she could have gone away in good faith, but now, when everything that had been between them had crumbled to pieces, torn asunder by her own thinking and pondering....
During these weeks at Tegneby she had made up her mind not to go on any longer. She was longing to go away to new conditions, new work. Yes, the longing for work had come back; she had had enough of this sickly desire of clinging to somebody, to be cuddled and petted and called little girl.
At the thought of breaking with him her heart winced with pain. She shrank from causing him sorrow, but she had kept it up as long as possible. Gert had been happy while it lasted, and he was free from the degrading slavery with his wife.
She was perfectly resigned to the thought that her life henceforth would be work and solitude only. She knew she could not obliterate the past months from her life; she would always remember them and the bitter lessons they had taught her. The love that others found enough was not enough for her—it was better for her to dispense with it altogether than to be contented.