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little while before the rain troubled their surface again.
Jenny borrowed Mrs. Rasmussen’s books and learnt to knit
the kind of lace that bordered her curtains, but neither reading
nor knitting came to much. She sat in the rocking-chair by the
window all day long, not even caring to dress properly, only
wearing her old faded kimono. As her condition became more
and more apparent she suffered agonies.
Gert Gram had written to say he was coming to see her,
and two days later he arrived, driving up in the early morning
in pouring rain. He stayed a week, putting up at the railway
hotel two miles from the village, but spending all his time with
her. When he left he promised to come again soon — possibly
in six weeks.
Jenny lay awake all night with her lamp burning. She
knew she could not bear it again; it had been too awful.
Everything was unbearable from the moment he arrived — his first
worried, compassionate glance when he saw her — dressed in
a new navy blue straight frock made by the village dressmaker.
“How lovely you are,” he said, and declared she was like a
madonna. Madonna, indeed! His arm placed cautiously
round her waist, his long, guarded kiss on her forehead, made
her feel as if she could die of shame. And how he had worried
her with his concern about her health and his advice about
taking enough exercise. One day when the rain stopped he
dragged her for a long walk, insisting that she should hang on
his arm for support. One evening he had looked at her
needlework — stealthily — expecting probably that she would be
hemming baby linen. He meant it all so kindly, and there was no
hope of a change for the better when he would come again —
more likely the reverse; she simply could not endure it.
One day she had a letter from him in which, among other
things, he said she ought to see a doctor, and the same night
she wrote to Gunnar Heggen telling him that she was expecting
a child in February, and would he let her have the address of
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