“You look exactly the same as then, and you have lived three years about which I don’t know anything,” said Helge gently. “I can scarcely realize that I am here with you again—it seems as if all that has happened since we parted here in Rome were not true. Yet you belong perhaps to somebody else now?”
Jenny did not answer.
“Are you engaged?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“Jenny”—Helge bent his head so that she could not see his face—“all these years I have been hoping—dreaming of winning you back. I have imagined that we should meet again some day and come to an understanding. You said I was the first man you had been fond of. Is my dream impossible?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Heggen?”
She did not answer at once.
“I have always been jealous of Heggen,” said Helge gently. “I thought he was the one, especially when I saw that you both lived here. So you are in love with each other?”
Jenny still did not answer.