“True,” she said. “When a ship sets sail, circumstances may cause it to be wrecked—a collision or a mistake in the construction of a wheel—but it does not start with that presumption. Besides, one must try and conquer circumstances; there is nearly always a way out of them.”
“You are very optimistic, Miss Winge.”
“I am,” she said, and after a while: “I have become an optimist since I have seen how much people really can stand without losing courage to struggle on, and without being degraded.”
“That is exactly what I think they are—reduced in value, anyway.”
“Not all. And even to find one who does not allow life to abase or reduce him is enough to make you optimistic. We are going in here.”
“This looks more like a Montmartre café, don’t you think?” said Helge, looking around.
Along the walls of the small room were plush-covered forms; small iron tables with marble tops stood in front of them, and the steam rose from two nickel boilers on the counter.
“These places are the same everywhere. Do you know Paris?”
“No, but I thought....” He felt suddenly irritated with this young girl artist who went about the world as she pleased—and God knows where she got the money from. It seemed to her quite as natural for him to have been in Paris as in a restaurant in Christiania. It was easy for people like her to speak of self-reliance. An unhappy love affair in Paris, which she forgot in Rome, was probably the greatest of her trials, and made her feel so confident and brave and able to solve the questions of life.
Her shape was almost scraggy, but the face was healthy and the colouring beautiful.