Should I have something
very pathetic, like the old grandmother going out day after day to pick
up coke for her sick daughter's freezing orphans till she fell sick
herself? What should I do with the family in that case? They could not
be left at that point, and I promptly imagined a granddaughter, a girl of
about eighteen, very pretty and rather proud, a sort of belle in her
humble neighborhood, who should take her grandmother's place. I decided
that I should have her Italian, because I knew something of Italians, and
could manage that nationality best, and I should call her Maddalena;
either Maddalena or Marina; Marina would be more Venetian, and I saw that
I must make her Venetian. Here I was on safe ground, and at once the
love-interest appeared to help me out. By virtue of the law of
contrasts; it appeared to me in the person of a Scandinavian lover, tall,
silent, blond, whom I at once felt I could do, from my acquaintance with
Scandinavian lovers in Norwegian novels. His name was Janssen, a good,
distinctive Scandinavian name; I do not know but it is Swedish; and I
thought he might very well be a Swede; I could imagine his manner from
that of a Swedish waitress we once had.
Janssen--Jan Janssen, say-drove the coke-cart which Marina's grandmother
used to follow out of the coke-yard, to pick up the bits of coke as they
were jolted from it, and he had often noticed her with deep indifference.
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