“Oh, Jenny!” He shook his head. “I may come to you, all the same. Would you be angry—or sorry?”
“I think I should be sorry—for your sake. No, do not come, Gunnar. I will not take your love when I know I could just as well give mine to anybody else.”
He laughed a little, half angrily, half sadly.
“Then I ought to do it. If once you were mine you would never belong to anybody else—I know you too well for that—but as you ask me not to, I will wait:” he added, with the same curious little laugh.
XI
All day long the weather had been bad, with cold, pale clouds high up in the sky; towards evening some thin brass-yellow stripes appeared on the western horizon. Jenny had been up to Monte Celio to sketch in the afternoon, but it did not come to much—she had been sitting listlessly on the big stairs outside of San Gregorio, looking down into the grove where the big trees were beginning to bud and daisies shone all over the grass. She came back through the avenue below the south side of the Palatine. The ruins showed dull grey against the palms of the convent on the mountain-top; the evergreen shrubs hung on the slope, powdered with chalky dust.
Some shivering postcard-sellers loitered about outside the Constantin arch on the Piazza, where the ruins of the Colosseum, the Palatine, and the Forum lay. Very few tourists were about; a couple of skinny old ladies bargained in vile Italian with a mosaic pedlar.
A small boy of barely three hung on to Jenny’s cloak, offering her a small wisp of pansies. He was exquisitely black eyed and long haired, and dressed in national costume, with pointed hat, velvet jacket, and sandals over white woollen socks. He could not speak distinctly yet, but he could manage to ask for a soldo.
Jenny gave him the coin, and instantly the mother came up to his side, thanking her and taking the money herself. She, too, had tried to give her dress a national touch by lacing a red velvet bodice on top of her dirty checked blouse, and pinning on top of her hair a serviette folded into a square. She carried an infant in her arms. It was three weeks old, she said, in answer to Jenny’s question. Yes, the poor dear was ill.