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some people who are happy. That feeling is something still
left of my old self — even if there is nothing else."
Instead of going back to the city, they crossed the Piazza,
walking in the direction of the church.
The shadows fell coal black on to the square in the
moonlight. White light and night-black darkness played about
ghostlike in one of the arcades. The other lay in complete
obscurity but for the row of statues on top. The front of the
church was in shadow, but here and there the dome glittered
like water. The two fountains sent their white jets sparkling
and foaming towards the moon-blue sky. The water rose
whirling in the air, splashing down again to the porphyry
shelves to drop and trickle back into the basin.
Gunnar and Jenny walked slowly in the shade of the arcade
towards the church.
"Jenny," he said all of a sudden, in a perfectly cool and
everyday voice, "will you marry me?"
"No," she answered after a pause, in a similar tone.
"I mean it."
"Yes, but surely you understand that I don’t want to."
"I don’t see why not. If I understood you rightly, you don’t
value your life very highly at present, and you entertain thoughts
of suicide occasionally. As you feel so inconsolable in any
case, why should you not marry me? I think you might try."
Jenny shook her head: "Thank you, Gunnar — but I think
it would be taxing your friendship too heavily." She spoke
in earnest. "In the first place, you ought to understand that
I cannot accept it, and in the second that, if you could make
me accept you as a last resource, it would not be worth your
troubling to reach out one of your little fingers to save me."
"It is not friendship." He hesitated a little. "The truth
is that I have got fond of you. It is not to save you — although
I would do anything to help you, of course — but because I
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