“Ye—s”—she reflected a moment, then said suddenly, “but it is your own choice. You are not a slave; you serve willingly something or somebody that you prize higher than yourself. Are you not glad you can begin the new year alone, entirely free, and only do the work you like?”
Helge remembered the previous evening in the piazza San Pietro; he looked at the city, the soft veiled colourings of it in the sun, and he looked at the fair young girl beside him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well”—she rose, buttoned her jacket, and opened the paint-box—“I must work now.”
“And I suppose you would like to get rid of me?”
Jenny smiled. “I daresay you are tired too.”
“Not very—I must pay the bill.”
She called the woman and helped him, squeezing out colours on to her palette meanwhile.
“Do you think you can find your way back to town?”