“Do you love him?”
“Yes, but I will not marry him.”
“Oh, I see,” said Helge, in a hard voice.
“No.” She bent her head, tired, smiling sadly: “I have done with love; I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. I am tired, and I wish you would go, Helge.”
But he did not move.
“I cannot realize now when I see you again that it is all over. I never would believe it. I have been thinking so much of it, I suppose it was my own fault. I was so timid, I never knew what was the right thing to do. Everything might have been quite different. I have often remembered the last evening I was with you in Rome, and it seemed always that such an occasion would present itself again, for I left you then because I thought it was right. Surely, that could not have been the cause of my losing you? I had never been near a woman then,” he said, looking down. “I was warned by what I had seen at home. Dreams and fancies became a hell at times, but that fear was always paramount.
“I am twenty-nine and there has been no beautiful or happy experience in my life but that short spring spent with you. Can you not understand that I have never been able to separate you from my thoughts, that I love you as before? The only happiness I have known is that you gave me. I cannot let you go out of my life—not now.”
She got up, trembling, and he rose too. Instinctively she drew back a few steps from him:
“Helge, there has been another.”
He stood still, looking at her.