Cesca.
“P.S.—I must add something: If it is a girl she is going to be called Jenny. I don’t mind what Lennart says. He sends his regards to you, by the way.”
Gunnar handed the letter back to Jenny, who put it in her pocket.
“I am so pleased,” she said gently. “I am glad there are some people who are happy. That feeling is something still left of my old self—even if there is nothing else.”
Instead of going back to the city, they crossed the Piazza, walking in the direction of the church.
The shadows fell coal black on to the square in the moonlight. White light and night-black darkness played about ghostlike in one of the arcades. The other lay in complete obscurity but for the row of statues on top. The front of the church was in shadow, but here and there the dome glittered like water. The two fountains sent their white jets sparkling and foaming towards the moon-blue sky. The water rose whirling in the air, splashing down again to the porphyry shelves to drop and trickle back into the basin.
Gunnar and Jenny walked slowly in the shade of the arcade towards the church.
“Jenny,” he said all of a sudden, in a perfectly cool and everyday voice, “will you marry me?”
“No,” she answered after a pause, in a similar tone.
“I mean it.”