“You are quite decided, then, to break completely with—er—the man concerned? You wrote me to that effect.”
“I am,” she said firmly. “It is not the man I was engaged to,” she added, after a pause.
“Thank God!” he burst out, so relieved that Jenny could not help smiling a little.
“Well, you know, Jenny, he was not worth reproducing—not by you anyway. I saw in the papers recently that he has got his doctor’s degree. Well, it might have been worse—I was afraid....”
“It is his father,” she said abruptly.
Heggen came to a dead stop. She fell to crying desperately, and he put his arm round her and laid his hand to her cheek while she went on sobbing with her head on his shoulder.
Standing so, she began to tell him all about it. Once she looked up at his face; it was pale and haggard; and she started crying again. When she stopped, he lifted her head, looking at her:
“My God, Jenny—what you must have suffered! I cannot realize it.”
They walked back to the village in silence.
“Come with me to Berlin,” he said suddenly. “I cannot bear to think of you here alone and brooding over this.”