before, though, not being interested in Ingeborg then, I had not resented his ill-humour, contenting myself with remarking to my friend that I understood now why the Danes disliked the Swedes so much—­a generalisation that was probably as unjust as most of one’s judgments of other peoples.  After dinner I asked her why she tolerated the fellow.  She flushed painfully and murmured that times were hard.  I protested that she could easily get another boarder to replace him, but she said Axel Larson had been there so long—­nearly two years—­and was comfortable, and knew the ways of the house, and it would be very discourteous to ask him to go.  I insisted that rather than see her suffer I would move into Larson’s room myself, but she urged tremulously that she didn’t suffer at all from his rudeness, it was only his surface-manner; it deceived strangers, but there was a good heart underneath, as who could know better than she?  Besides, he was a genius with the brush, and everybody knew well that geniuses were bears.  And, finally, she could not afford to lose boarders—­there were already two vacancies.

“It ended—­as I dare say you have guessed—­by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede.  He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money.  I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had a heart of gold.  He laughed boisterously, and said one could not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder.  ’I dare say the real truth is,’ he wound up, ’that you are hard up, like me, and want to do the thing cheap.’

“‘I wasn’t aware you were hard up,’ I said, for I had seen him often enough flaunting it in the theatres and restaurants.

“‘Not for luxuries,’ he retorted with a guffaw, ’but for necessities—­yes.  And there comes in the value of our domestic eyesore.  Why, I haven’t paid her a skilling for six months!’

“I thought of poor Ingeborg’s thin winter attire, and would have liked to reply with my fist, only the reply didn’t seem quite logical.  It was not my business, after all; but I thought I understood now why Ingeborg was so reluctant to part with him—­it is the immemorial fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes imagined he had some secret hold over her.  Often I saw her cower and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze.  But I decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over the weak—­of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally because