“Yes; I saw you had written it in the visitors’ book at the club.” She blushed slightly, thinking he might believe that she had looked it up on purpose.
“I suppose it is nice. On the whole, there are few names that are nice or ugly in themselves; it all depends if you like the people or not. When I was a boy we had a nurse called Jenny; I could not bear her, and ever since I thought the name was hideous and common. It seemed to me preposterous that you should be called Jenny, but now I think it so pretty; it gives one an idea of fairness. Can you not hear how delicately fair it sounds?—Jenny—a dark woman could not be called that, not Miss Jahrman, for instance. Francesca suits her capitally, don’t you think? It sounds so capricious, but Jenny is nice and bright.”
“It is a name we’ve always had in my father’s family,” she said, by way of an answer.
“What do you think of Rebecca, for instance?”
“I don’t know. Rather harsh and clattering, perhaps, but it is pretty, though.”
“My mother’s name is Rebecca,” said Helge. “I think it sounds hard, too. My sister’s name is Sophy. She married only to get away from home, I am sure, and have a place of her own. I wonder mother could be so delighted to get her married, considering the cat-and-dog life she herself has led with my father. But there was no end of a fuss about the Rev. Arnesen, when my sister got engaged to him. I can’t stand my brother-in-law, neither can father, I believe, but mother!...
“My fiancée—I was engaged once, you know—her name was Catherine, but she was always called Titti. I saw she had that name put into the papers, too, when her marriage was announced.
“It was a stupid thing altogether. It was three years ago. She was giving some lessons in the school where I was teaching. She was not a bit pretty, but she flirted with everybody, and no woman had ever taken any notice of me—which you can easily understand, when you think of me as I was here at first. She always laughed at everything—she was only nineteen. Heaven knows why she took to me.
“I was jealous, and it amused her. The more jealous she made me, the more in love was I. I suppose it was less love than male vanity, having a sweetheart very much in demand. I was very young then. I wanted her to be exclusively taken up with me—a very difficult proposition as I was then. I have often wondered what she wanted me for.
“My people wanted our engagement to be kept secret, because we were so young. Titti wanted it made public, and when I reproached her for being too much interested in other men, she said she could not spend all her time with me, as our engagement was a secret.