Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXIVIt was not until he was standing in front of her, at the Hague, that he knew, in his innermost soul, that he had come back to Holland because of her and of her alone. It struck him at once that her eyes were brighter, her movements younger, that her voice sounded clearer.“I have read your book!” was the first thing that she said to him, radiantly.“Well?” he asked, while his deep, almost sombre eyes laughed in his rough, bronzed face.She would not tell him that the book,Peace, written in his clear, luminous style, prophesying in ringing tones the great watchword of the future, had consoled her for his three months’ absence. She managed to speak of it in terms of quiet appreciation, betraying no sign of her enthusiasm except by an added brightness in her eyes and a curious lilt in her voice, with its echo of summer and of carolling birds. The book was a great success, written as it were in one breath, as though he had uttered it in a single sentence of quiet knowledge, warning them of the coming changes in the world; in a single sentence of quiet consolation, foretelling its future destinies. There was in his words, in that one long sentence of prophetic consolation, an irresistiblesweetness, a magic charm which affected for a moment even the most sceptical of his readers, even though they scoffed at it immediately afterwards; something wonderful, inspired ... and so simple that the word was spoken almost without art, only with a note that sounded strangely clear, as though echoing from some higher plane. He had thought out the book during his lecturing-period in Holland and Germany; he had written it up there, high up in the Alps, with his eyes roaming over the ice-bound horizons; and it had often seemed to him as if Peace were waving her argent banners in the pure air, her joyous processions descending from the eternal snows of the upper air to the pollution of the lower, to trumpet forth with blithe clarions the holy tidings, the fair, unfaltering prophecy.... The book had comforted her; she had read it in the Woods, on the dunes, by the sea; and, in the warm summer air, with its tang of salt, she had sat with the book in her hands and felt him with her, though absent.... She knew the sentences by heart; but she tempered her enthusiasm, lest she should betray herself. And, when she had spoken of the book and was silent for a moment, he said:“And now tell me about yourself! What have you been doing all these months?”“What have I been doing?...”“Yes. You must have done something besides reading myPeace!”She almost blushed; and a thrill went through her, that catch at her throat and grip at her heart which his step, his voice, his glance could still always give her; and she was not able to answer at once. Yes, really she had done nothing that summer except read hisPeace! So it seemed to her for a moment. But, when she recovered from that sudden wave of emotion, she reflected that it was not so; that she had read other things; that she had dreamt, had thought; that she had lived! It was very strange, but she reflected ... that she had lived!It was as though both of them had much to say to each other and yet did not know how to say it. Van der Welcke was not at home; and they talked together for a long time of indifferent things. He felt all the while that a vague question was rising to his lips, a question hardly formulated even in his mind. He longed to ask her something, such a question as a brother’s tenderness might have prompted, to which she would answer with a sister’s ready sympathy. But he did not know how to speak; and so he buried within himself that strange bright tenderness which longed to give itself expression, to ask its questions; and he locked himself up in his deep, mournful seriousness, the sombreness of a middle-aged man. She also, opposite him, was the same, sat and spoke like a middle-aged woman; he remarked the soft grey of her curling hair; and both of them, serious, almost indifferent, talkedquietly, if sympathetically, of casual things.... And yet he felt that, deep down in herself, she was changed. She had never looked like that before, never spoken so clearly, with such young and lively gestures. He noticed that she had been reading, that she had read other books than hisPeace; and, when he told her of the world of misery which he had seen quite lately in Germany, she replied in a tone of compassion which struck him, because it was no more the shuddering pity of a woman of the world for the misery that swarms far beneath her like vermin, but true compassion, the welling up of a new and generous youth in her soul, an enthusiasm now experienced for the very first time. How sincerely her answer rang, how fervent were the words in which she uttered it! He was astonished and told her so, told her that he would never have suspected such sincerity, such fervour, such capacity for pity in a woman of her caste. But she defended her caste, especially because she did not wish to be too exuberant in her new youth and new life and was perpetually suppressing herself. And so now, to hide her feelings, she defended her caste: did he not think that there were others who had the power of feeling as she did for the misery of the world, women like herself, women of her caste, not merely those who perform their perfunctory little works of charity, but other women who welcome the new ideas and above all the new sentiments of universalbrotherhood, women who will perhaps stamp them on their coming children, are already implanting them, germ by germ, so that later, soon indeed, they will bear a new generation whose lives will be based on those sentiments of brotherhood? He was surprised at what she said, but he brushed it aside with a rough gesture, while a glance of hatred flashed from his sombre, brooding eyes, deep-set in his rough face—a glance that was sometimes anguished as though with pain—and he said to her that this was not true, that it could not be, that her whole caste was nothing but egoism, nothing but hypocrisy, vast and monstrous, its hypocrisy perhaps even more colossal than its egoism, and that he was surprised at himself for having any friendly feeling towards her, a woman of her caste. A rough candour made his voice sound harsh. But she was not offended by it; she listened to him although out of his rough words there came a gust which seemed likely to overthrow all that she had long looked upon as cultured, correct, respectable, irreproachable, moral and aristocratic. It was as though her reading, like a breeze from the sea or the dunes, had suddenly removed and blown away from her all the pettiness, the miserable distortion of the dwarf plant with its aping of greatness; all the everlasting strife of opinions, interests and prejudices waged in and around all those creatures of the world, the women of her set. He noticed it, with a thrill ofhappiness; and he knew that they understood each other. There had sprung up between them the common understanding, the common discussion of things that are never discussed in current conversation.And, because of his happiness, he knew that he loved her, even though it was late in the day, even though it was too late. He had never known a love like that; he felt it now for the first, the very first time, that wave of exultant, smiling happiness, but at the same time he felt it like a shadow, a grief, a regret for what might have been. She had not yet felt it like that, a regret for what might have been, because she was living again, because she was living for the first time, late but not too late, since she was living at last in a real, intense, pulsating life; but to him, the man who had lived but only never loved, it came at once, came as regret for what might have been....And his love seemed never likely to become anything else than just that: regret....Chapter XXVIn these days, when Constance felt herself becoming so strangely young and alive—she who for so long believed that she had never, never lived—she was compelled to step outside that life dominated purely by feeling. Van Vreeswijck came to her one evening and sat talking for hours. She liked him; she valued him as a good friend who, notwithstanding that he really belonged to the most insufferable section of the Court set, had shown that he was not too much afraid of degrading himself by associating with Van der Welcke, with her or even with Brauws, though he loudly and sweepingly condemned Brauws’ views. She, in her new pride of life, looked down upon him, with a kindly contempt, as one of the little people in the narrow little circle, a humming-top spinning around itself and around other humming-tops, just another figure in the merry-go-round which they represented to her, all of them; but she valued his unaffected friendship and, though she thought him anything but a great soul, she did not think him a base or evil soul. And so she spoke to him sympathetically that evening and promised to help him.She promised; and yet it was exceedingly difficult. A new honesty had sprung up in her, making her hesitate to whom to turn first. She had meant tospeak to Van der Welcke the next morning, in quite an ordinary way. But, when she saw him for a moment before he went out, he seemed to her to be suppressing some secret grief deep down in himself: his blue boyish eyes were overcast, his mouth half-sulking, as on rainy days when he was not able to go cycling; and yet it was fine now, a fine autumn day, and he came down in his cycling-suit, fetched his bicycle, said that he was going a long way, that he would perhaps not be back for lunch. She suspected in him a craving to get away, as fast as possible and as far as possible, and to deaden with that wild speed the pain of his gnawing grief. But, in the soft glow of her new youth, which illuminated everything within her and around her, she had not the heart to tell him what she was going to do, what she had promised to do, though in her secret self she thought it dishonest not to tell him straight out. So she said nothing, let him go. She looked after him for a moment, watched the angry curve of his shoulders, as he pedalled desperately, in his mad craving to get away, far away.She sighed, felt sorry for him, she no longer knew why or wherefore ... But she had promised Van Vreeswijck; and perhaps, she thought, it would be best so. She went out therefore, took the tram to the Bezuidenhout, rang at Bertha’s door, found her at home. In the hall, the removers’ men were busy packing china and glass in big cases. Louise andFrans were going from room to room with a list in their hands, making notes of the furniture which Mamma would want at Baarn. The little villa had been taken.Constance found Bertha upstairs in Van Naghel’s study. She was sitting at an open window in the large room with its dark, heavy furniture, gazing into the garden, with her hands in her lap. She seemed calmer than she had been the other evening, at Mamma’s. She sat there in her black dress, her face old and drawn, but calmer now; and her eyes never left the garden, a town garden full of rose-trees and fragrant in the late summer air. But all around her the room was gloomy and deadly and desolate. The book-cases were empty: the books had been taken out and divided among the boys. Only the large bronze inkstand remained on the writing-table. The furniture stood stiff, formal, stripped, unused, lifeless, as though awaiting the day of the sale. The bare walls showed the marks of the etchings and family-portraits that had been taken down.Bertha rose when Constance entered; she kissed her and sat down again at once, sinking into her chair and folding her hands in her lap. And Constance asked if she could have a moment’s serious conversation with her. A shade of weariness passed over Bertha’s face, as if to convey that she had had so many serious conversations lately and would rathergo on gazing into the garden. She lifted her eyes almost sorrowfully from the riot of roses, turned them on Constance, asked what it was about. And Constance began to tell her: Van Vreeswijck had been with her for a long time the evening before and had told her that he had loved Marianne for so long, so long....Bertha was interested for a moment, seemed to wake from a dream:“Van Vreeswijck?” she asked.Constance went on. He had never said a word to Marianne, because he feared, was almost certain, indeed, that she did not care for him. Had it not been mentioned that they were moving to Baarn, he would perhaps not have ventured to speak even now. But this threatened change had suddenly compelled him to open his heart ... to her, to Constance. And he had begged Constance to ask Bertha, to ask Marianne herself if he might hope ... perhaps later....“Van Vreeswijck?” Bertha repeated.Two months ago, though she had never been a match-making mother, she would have welcomed this proposal, would have rejoiced at it: Van Vreeswijck was a man of good family, belonged to their own circle and to the Court set, had a little money; not very young, perhaps, but a good-looking, pleasant, well-bred fellow. But now she did not know, showed little or no interest after that momentaryflicker and went on dully, with her hands lying motionless on her black dress:“Well, I have nothing against it, Constance. If Marianne likes the idea, I do too.”Her voice sounded as if she were withdrawing herself from everything, including her children’s interests. She sat there, just blankly staring, leaving everything to them. Louise and Frans went through the house looking out the furniture for which there would be room at Baarn. Constance heard their voices on the stairs:“So,” Louise was saying, “we have, in addition to the furniture in Mamma’s bedroom, in Marianne’s and mine, enough for one spare-room; then there’s the piano, from the drawing-room, and the china-cabinet....”“Isn’t the china-cabinet ever so much too big ... for those small rooms down there?”“Yes, perhaps.... Perhaps we had better leave the china-cabinet....”Bertha heard as well as Constance: perhaps Louise and Frans were speaking loudly in the passage on purpose. Bertha, however, did not stir: her eyes remained vague, her hands lifeless. It was obviously a matter of supreme indifference to her whether they took the china-cabinet with them or not....And, as she did not speak at all, Constance was obliged to ask:“Would you mind, Bertha, if I just spoke to Marianne?”“Very well,” said Bertha, “do.”“Now? Here?”“Yes,” said Bertha.Constance rose, opened the door.“So that’s two more tables ... two sofas,” Frans counted, making notes on his list.“Louise,” said Constance, at the door, “would you ask Marianne to come here a moment?”She sat down again by her sister, affectionately, took her hand, brimming over with pity for the tired woman whom she had always looked upon as an ever capable, busy woman of the world, now exhausted with all the thousand cares of her life and smitten by the sudden blow that had befallen her. And Constance’ heart beat anxiously in dread of what was coming: she trembled, felt her eyes become wet....Marianne entered, pale, almost diaphanous; and her black blouse made her look a frail little figure of mourning, slender and drooping. For the thing which she could not conceal in her innermost self was no longer a light shining from her, visible to all: it was now a cloud around her, still visible, but as a shadow of grief, whereas but lately it had been a glow of happiness. Constance at once drew her to her, kissed her, held her to her. And she could not find words. Bertha did not speak.“Marianne ...” Constance began.“Are you angry, Aunt Constance?”“No, darling, why....”“Yes, you are angry with me.”“Why, Marianne!”“Yes, you are different. I have seen it for some time; there’s something, I know....”It was no longer the joyous, playful, almost mischievous voice in which she had said this before. It now sounded rather like a cry of fear, because it, “that,” seemed so obvious that every one was bound to see it, that Aunt Constance herself must needs see it ... and be angry.“Really, Marianne, I am not angry. But I wanted to speak to you alone....”“Oh, then youareangry!” she said, passionately, almost hiding herself in Constance’ arms. “Don’t be angry!” she said, almost entreatingly. “Do tell me that you will try ... not to be angry with me!”She betrayed herself almost entirely, incapable of keeping back that which had once shone from her and which now nearly threatened to sob itself from her. Constance could find no words.“We shall soon be going away, Auntie!” said Marianne, her features wrung with grief. “And then you will not see me any more ... and then ... then perhaps you will never have any reason to be angry with me again....”And then, all at once, she gave a sob, an irresistiblesob, jarring every nerve with a shock that seemed to leave her rigid. She shut her eyes, buried her face in Constance’ shoulder and remained lying like this, after that one convulsive sob, motionless, pale, as though she were dying, as though devastated with sorrow. Bertha, opposite her, stared at her vaguely, with her hands lying helplessly on her black dress.And Constance could find no words. Time after time she thought of mentioning Van Vreeswijck’s name, time after time the name died away on her lips. She gently urged Marianne to control herself, assuring her that she was not angry, had never been angry. And for a moment, thinking of herself, she felt afraid.If love could be now gladness and now mourning, as it had been and was in this suffering, love-stricken child, should it not be the same with her—that gladness and oh, perhaps later, O God, that mourning!—with her, the middle-aged woman, who felt herself growing younger and a new life coursing through her: at first, in the soft spring flush of a girl’s dreams; now in the summer glory of a woman’s—a young woman’s—love? But there was a mirror opposite her; and she saw Marianne grief-smitten, shaken with sobs ... and in herself she saw nothing! She seemed to have the power to hide her happiness in her secret self: her agony—O God!—she would also hide later in her secretself. She saw nothing in herself. And she knew that nobody saw it in her. It remained secretly, mysteriously hidden. Adolphine, Cateau, the Ruyvenaers, all of them talked about her husband and Marianne: she knew it; but she also knew that they never talked about herself and Brauws ... though she had now known him for months, though he was the friend of the house and came to their house almost daily. He was a friend of Van der Welcke’s, he was a friend of the house and a very well-known man; and that was all. It was not visible to anybody, to anybody....Oh, was it not strange? That this same feeling, which she bore in her innermost self, unseen by any, should shine within her as a sun, while with Marianne it had shone out, for all the world to see, as an illicit joy ... and was now streaming forth from her, in a convulsive sob, as an illicit sorrow. What she, the woman, hid within her the child could not hide within her, as though her soul were too slight for it, so slight that it had glowed through her soul as through alabaster and now flowed from it as from alabaster.... Oh, was it not strange, was it not strange? After all, she did not hide it intentionally, for she, the middle-aged woman had never, in her new young life, thought of the people outside ... in connection with her reviving youth! But it was so, it was so, beyond a doubt.... And it made her feel strong: it seemed to her a gracethat had been accorded her, this power to live and go on living a new life deep in her secret self, invisible to the people outside, this power to live and love....She felt grateful: something sang in her like a hymn of thanksgiving; but she was filled with compassion for Marianne. The girl, despite Constance’ cheering words, still lay motionless against her shoulder, with closed eyes, as though dead. Constance now gently forced her to rise, led her away without a word ... while Bertha remained sitting, just followed them both with her dull, indifferent eyes, then looked out at the roses in the garden, her hands lying helplessly in her black lap.Constance opened the door, led the girl into the drawing-room. The carpet had been taken up, the curtains taken down; the furniture stood cold and lifeless on the bare boards.“Marianne, darling, do listen to me now!” Constance forced herself to say, in a firmer voice. “I am not angry and I wanted to speak to you ... and I have something to ask you.... But first tell me: do you believe that I care for you and that anything I say and ask comes from nothing but my love for you?”Marianne opened her eyes:“Yes, Auntie.”“Well, then,” said Constance, “Van Vreeswijck....”But Marianne suddenly drew herself up where they were sitting—she with Constance’ arms around her—nervous, terrified, at once knowing, understanding:“No, Auntie, no!” she almost screamed.“Marianne!...”“No, Auntie, oh, no, no, no! I can’t do it, I can’t do it!”And she threw herself back, sobbed out her words, as though she no longer dared fling herself into Constance’ arms.“Marianne, he is very fond of you ... and he is such a good fellow....”“Oh, Auntie, no, no, no!... No, no, Auntie, no!... I can’t do it!”Constance was silent. Then she said:“So, it’s no, darling?”“No, Auntie, no, no!... I don’t care for him, I can never, never care for him! Oh, no, no, it is cruel of you, if you ask that of me, if you want to force me into it!... I don’t care for him.... There is ... there is some one else....”She was silent, stared before her like a madwoman, with the same fixed stare as her mother. And suddenly she became very still, accepting her anguish, and said, gently, with a heart-rending smile:“No, Auntie ... no. I would rather go ... with Mamma and Louise ... to Baarn. We shall live very pleasantly there ... cosily, the three ofus together.... Marietje will join us later, from her boarding-school.... Karel....”She tried to utter just a word of interest in her mother, sisters and brothers, but her indifferent, dead voice belied her. There was nothing in her but what had once shone from her, what was now trying to sob from her....Constance clasped her in her arms:“My child!”“No, Auntie, you will tell him, won’t you?... Tell him that I am sorry ... but ... but that I don’t care for him.... I care ... I care for some one else....”And now, without speaking a word, raising her beseeching, tear-filled eyes to her aunt’s, she said to Constance, without speaking a word, told her only with her beseeching glance, told her that she loved ... that she loved Uncle Henri ... and that she couldn’t help it; that she knew it was very wrong of her; that she begged her aunt to forgive her and implored her please not to be angry; that she entreated only to be allowed to suffer and sob about it; but that for the rest she hoped for nothing more from life, nothing, nothing; that she would go quietly to Baarn, with her mother and sisters, and try to manage to live there and pine away silently in her grief....And Constance, as she held her in her arms, thought:“Living ... Living.... This child ... this poor child ... is living early; and, if I have begun to live late ... O God, O God, must I also suffer as she is doing ... must I also suffer some day ... soon, perhaps ... if one cannot have life without suffering?...”Chapter XXVIWhen Constance returned home, she was even more troubled than she had been in the morning by what she called her dishonesty towards Van der Welcke. She lunched alone with Addie; Van der Welcke did not come in, was evidently trying to lose himself on his bicycle in the roads outside the Hague and lunching off a sandwich and a glass of beer at a country inn. He did not come home till very late, tired and dusty, and he was in an unbearable mood, as though his surfeit of movement and speed and space had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and not the beneficent anæsthesia which he had expected of it. Roughly, as though dispirited and disgusted, he put away his machine, without bestowing on it the care which he usually gave to it after a long ride, angry with the lifeless steel which had not consoled him, which had not shown itself a friend this time. It was three o’clock; and he went straight to his room to change his clothes.Constance, in her drawing-room, remained uneasy. In her heart there was a deep pity for Marianne; and for him too an almost motherly pity, which made her eyes fill with tears. Oh, when she had found so very much for herself, so much that was broad and lofty, radiant and lovely, of which sheasked no more than that it should exist, exist in soft radiance within herself, a mystic sun, a glowing mystery, invisible to all but her, it pained her that those two, Henri and Marianne, could find nothing for themselves and for each other!... She listened anxiously to the sounds upstairs. She heard his footsteps tramping overhead, heard him even throwing his clothes about, splashing the water noisily, almost breaking the jug and basin in his savage recklessness, his violent resentment against everything. It all reechoed in her; she kept on starting: there he was flinging his boots across the room; bang went the door of his wardrobe; and, when he had finished, she heard him go to his den. Everything became still; the warmth of the summer afternoon floated in through the open windows; a heat mist hung over the garden of the little villa; in the kitchen, the maid was droning out a sentimental song, in a dreary monotone....Constance’ uneasiness increased. Yes, she must, she must tell him something: she almost became frightened at the idea of telling him nothing, of concealing from him entirely that Van Vreeswijck had asked her to go to Marianne. And yet nothing compelled her to say anything to Henri; and it would perhaps not even, she thought, be fair to Van Vreeswijck. She did not know; her thoughts rambled on uneasily. But persistently, as though from out of the new, fresh youth that was hers, one ideaobtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing, not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back....All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri’s little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.“Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “I should like to speak to you for a moment....”He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:“What is it now?” he asked, roughly.She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort toclear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly ... so that he might know:“Oh,” she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene, “I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice....”Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously, that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she, who never asked his advice! And he echoed:“To ask my advice?”“Yes,” she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain constraint, “I wanted to tell you—what do you think?—Vreeswijck stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he wanted absolutely....”“Wanted what?”She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were flashing from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.“He would so much like ... he asked me....”She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes, now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But she could not keep silent either:“He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne....”She saw him give a shiver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she went on:“That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to Bertha ... and ask her....”“Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?” he repeated; and his eyes were almost black. “Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you’re not mixing yourself up in it, are you? You’re not going, surely?”“I went this morning,” she said; and her voice once more sounded discordant.He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself, he flew into a passion:“You went? You went this morning?” he raved; and even in his raving she saw the suffering. “Why need you mix yourself up in it? What business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck....”He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough word, cruel, hard and insulting:“Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting....”Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his pain, that the angrytempest died down at once and she merely said, very gently:“She has refused him.”He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed, his whole body relaxed; he gave a shiver and sat down, as though all his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:“She ... has refused him?”“Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!”“Yes, poor fellow!” he said, mechanically.“I wanted to tell you, because ...”“Because what?”“Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But you went out....”He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for a moment.But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one hideous constriction.They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her, made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced love-illusion of passion, the life-long mistake which they were mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness: all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again: the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having anything to givehim in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:“Henri....”He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle whichhad bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others—her own people, people like herself, the small people—felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt—in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement—that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen shewould like to give back now ... in so far as was possible to her!“Henri,” she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in those two or three seconds, “there is something more I want to say to you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm; and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last....”“What do you mean?” he asked.“I have been thinking a great deal lately,” she continued, turning her steady eyes towards him. “I have been thinking a very great deal, about our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made....”He became impatient:“What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?” he asked, with an irritable shake of his shoulders.“Come, Henri,” she said, gently, “let us talk for once, for once in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a mistake. And the fault....”“Is mine, I suppose?” he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working himself up for the scene which he foresaw.She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:“The fault is mine.”He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him: he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling alone with Marianne.But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:“The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that your life did not become ... what it might have been.”Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful humility that almost touched him.“But what are you driving at?” he said, nevertheless, in a voice that was still nervous and jerky. “You are very frank and honest in looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up for the wrong which I had done you.”“I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri.I should not have accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife.”“But what would you have done then?”“I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere....”“I should have had to give up the service just the same....”“But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young: you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps too late.”He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded anxiously:“Constance, I can’t talk in this way. I’m not used to it....”“Can’t you face things seriously for a moment?...”“No, I can’t. It upsets me. I don’t know: you mean to be nice, I believe, but please don’t let us talk like this. We’re not accustomed to it. And I ... I can’t do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets me.”“Come,” she said, in a motherly tone, “you are not so much upset as all that. You can have abicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment....”He sighed, sank into his chair, submitted to her stronger will. If only she had flown out at him, he would have stormed back at her; but she was saying such strange things, the sort of things that people never said, and she was so calm and frank about it, calmer and franker than people ever were.“You will listen seriously for a moment? Well, what I want to ask you is this: have you never thought that it would be better ... if we just quietly separated, Henri?”He said nothing, looked at her with his great wondering eyes.“It is certainly very late,” she said, “very late for me to propose it. But it is perhaps not too late.... Let us be honest, Henri: we have never been happy together. You might perhaps still be happy without me, released from me, free....”He continued to look at her, his eyes still full of amazement; and it seemed as though he was afraid to turn his gaze towards a life of such transcendent peace and quietness and sincerity. It seemed to him that she was urging him to take a road which grew fainter and fainter as it took its mystic, winding way towards clouds ... towards things that did not exist.“I?... Happy?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.But a more concrete thought now came into his mind:“And Addie?” he asked.“I am not forgetting him,” she said, gently. “He is the child of both of us, whom we both love. If we quietly ... quietly separate, if you become happy later, he will be able to understand that his parents, however passionately they both loved him, separated because it was better that they should. He need not suffer through it. He will not suffer through it. At least, I like to think that he will not. If we are only honest, Henri, he cannot suffer through it.”“And you ... what would you do?”She blushed, but did not lose her composure; he did not see her blush. She had not yet thought of herself for a moment: she was thinking, had been thinking, after that wave of remorse and after holding Marianne that morning in her arms, only of him and Marianne, of their happiness, his and Marianne’s, even though she did not mention the girl’s name again, once she had told him that Marianne had refused Van Vreeswijck. She was thinking only of the two of them.... What would she do? She did not know. Her love, it is true, rose radiantly before her: her love, her new life; but she was not thinking of outward change. Life, the real life, was an inward thing; outwardly she was the mother of her son and would remain so....“I?” she asked. “Nothing. I should simply stay as I am. Addie could be with us in turns.”“It would distress him, Constance....”“Perhaps, at first.... But he would soon understand.”“Constance, tell me, why are you speaking like this?”“In what way?”“What do you really mean, Constance? What do you mean by my happiness?”“Only what I say, Henri: that you may still be able to find your happiness.”“You are frank,” he said, forcing himself to adopt her tone, though it was difficult for him to speak like that. “You are frank. I will also try to be frank. My happiness? You speak of my happiness?... I am too old to find that now.”“No, you are not old. You are young.”“And you?”“I ... am old. But there is no question about me. I am thinking ... of you.”She looked at him and he suddenly understood her. He understood her, but he writhed under so much frankness and at seeing life so honestly:“No, no, Constance,” he mumbled.“Think it over,” she said, gently. “If you like ... I will agree. Only ... let us do it quietly, Henri, ... let us do it, if possible, with something of affection for each other.”Her eyes filled with tears. He was very much moved:“No, Constance, no,” he mumbled.“Henri, have the courage to be honest. Have the courage and do not be weak. Be a man. I am only a woman and I have the courage.”“Constance, people ...”“No, Henri, you must not hesitate because of people. If we cannot do it, it would be because of Addie. But I like to think that, if he understands, he will not suffer through it. Hemustnot suffer through it: that would be selfish of him; and he is not selfish.”“No, Constance, no!” he protested again.“Think it over, Henri,” she repeated. “Think it all out. I shall think of Addie also. You know how passionately devoted I am to him. But ...”“Constance, it is all too late.”“But think it over, Henri.”“Yes, yes, Constance, I shall ... I shall think it over.”“And, if we decide upon it ... let us do it ... let us decide to do it with something of affection for each other ...”“Yes, Constance ... yes, with affection ... You are nice ... you are kind ...”He looked at her, his chest heaving with emotion; a haze dimmed the boyish glance of his eyes. She had meant to go, quietly, to leave him alone. Shewent to the door, without another word, another look, wishing to leave him alone with his thoughts.“Constance!” he cried, hoarsely.She looked round. He was standing before her; and she saw him quivering, trembling with the emotion, the shock which the reality of life had sent shuddering through him. For a moment they stood in front of each other; and, because they saw into each other’s eyes, they told each other once more—silently, without words—that they understood each other! A great gratitude, an emotion that to him was almost superhuman shot through his small soul and flowed over her. And, impotently, he cried once more, like a man in a fever:“Constance!”He flung himself, distractedly, desperately, with a wild impulse, into her arms; bursting into sobs, he buried his head in her breast. She started violently; she felt his convulsive tremors against her heart. Then she threw her arm around him, stroked his hair. It was as though she were comforting her son.“I am mad, I am mad!” he muttered.He released himself, hurriedly pressed a quivering kiss on her forehead and tore down the stairs. And, when she went down to her drawing-room, she suddenly heard the front-door slam and saw him bicycling away like a madman, his back arched like a professional’s. He pedalled, pedalled furiously:she watched him lose himself ... in movement, speed and space ...“Poor boy!” she thought.Then she sank into a chair, while the room swam round her. She closed her eyes and her hands fell limply at her side. So she sat for half an hour, unconscious, alone ... as if the new life had been too keen, too intense, with its pure air, its honesty ... too rare and keen in its cold-blue ether ... and as if she were swooning away in it....

Chapter XXIVIt was not until he was standing in front of her, at the Hague, that he knew, in his innermost soul, that he had come back to Holland because of her and of her alone. It struck him at once that her eyes were brighter, her movements younger, that her voice sounded clearer.“I have read your book!” was the first thing that she said to him, radiantly.“Well?” he asked, while his deep, almost sombre eyes laughed in his rough, bronzed face.She would not tell him that the book,Peace, written in his clear, luminous style, prophesying in ringing tones the great watchword of the future, had consoled her for his three months’ absence. She managed to speak of it in terms of quiet appreciation, betraying no sign of her enthusiasm except by an added brightness in her eyes and a curious lilt in her voice, with its echo of summer and of carolling birds. The book was a great success, written as it were in one breath, as though he had uttered it in a single sentence of quiet knowledge, warning them of the coming changes in the world; in a single sentence of quiet consolation, foretelling its future destinies. There was in his words, in that one long sentence of prophetic consolation, an irresistiblesweetness, a magic charm which affected for a moment even the most sceptical of his readers, even though they scoffed at it immediately afterwards; something wonderful, inspired ... and so simple that the word was spoken almost without art, only with a note that sounded strangely clear, as though echoing from some higher plane. He had thought out the book during his lecturing-period in Holland and Germany; he had written it up there, high up in the Alps, with his eyes roaming over the ice-bound horizons; and it had often seemed to him as if Peace were waving her argent banners in the pure air, her joyous processions descending from the eternal snows of the upper air to the pollution of the lower, to trumpet forth with blithe clarions the holy tidings, the fair, unfaltering prophecy.... The book had comforted her; she had read it in the Woods, on the dunes, by the sea; and, in the warm summer air, with its tang of salt, she had sat with the book in her hands and felt him with her, though absent.... She knew the sentences by heart; but she tempered her enthusiasm, lest she should betray herself. And, when she had spoken of the book and was silent for a moment, he said:“And now tell me about yourself! What have you been doing all these months?”“What have I been doing?...”“Yes. You must have done something besides reading myPeace!”She almost blushed; and a thrill went through her, that catch at her throat and grip at her heart which his step, his voice, his glance could still always give her; and she was not able to answer at once. Yes, really she had done nothing that summer except read hisPeace! So it seemed to her for a moment. But, when she recovered from that sudden wave of emotion, she reflected that it was not so; that she had read other things; that she had dreamt, had thought; that she had lived! It was very strange, but she reflected ... that she had lived!It was as though both of them had much to say to each other and yet did not know how to say it. Van der Welcke was not at home; and they talked together for a long time of indifferent things. He felt all the while that a vague question was rising to his lips, a question hardly formulated even in his mind. He longed to ask her something, such a question as a brother’s tenderness might have prompted, to which she would answer with a sister’s ready sympathy. But he did not know how to speak; and so he buried within himself that strange bright tenderness which longed to give itself expression, to ask its questions; and he locked himself up in his deep, mournful seriousness, the sombreness of a middle-aged man. She also, opposite him, was the same, sat and spoke like a middle-aged woman; he remarked the soft grey of her curling hair; and both of them, serious, almost indifferent, talkedquietly, if sympathetically, of casual things.... And yet he felt that, deep down in herself, she was changed. She had never looked like that before, never spoken so clearly, with such young and lively gestures. He noticed that she had been reading, that she had read other books than hisPeace; and, when he told her of the world of misery which he had seen quite lately in Germany, she replied in a tone of compassion which struck him, because it was no more the shuddering pity of a woman of the world for the misery that swarms far beneath her like vermin, but true compassion, the welling up of a new and generous youth in her soul, an enthusiasm now experienced for the very first time. How sincerely her answer rang, how fervent were the words in which she uttered it! He was astonished and told her so, told her that he would never have suspected such sincerity, such fervour, such capacity for pity in a woman of her caste. But she defended her caste, especially because she did not wish to be too exuberant in her new youth and new life and was perpetually suppressing herself. And so now, to hide her feelings, she defended her caste: did he not think that there were others who had the power of feeling as she did for the misery of the world, women like herself, women of her caste, not merely those who perform their perfunctory little works of charity, but other women who welcome the new ideas and above all the new sentiments of universalbrotherhood, women who will perhaps stamp them on their coming children, are already implanting them, germ by germ, so that later, soon indeed, they will bear a new generation whose lives will be based on those sentiments of brotherhood? He was surprised at what she said, but he brushed it aside with a rough gesture, while a glance of hatred flashed from his sombre, brooding eyes, deep-set in his rough face—a glance that was sometimes anguished as though with pain—and he said to her that this was not true, that it could not be, that her whole caste was nothing but egoism, nothing but hypocrisy, vast and monstrous, its hypocrisy perhaps even more colossal than its egoism, and that he was surprised at himself for having any friendly feeling towards her, a woman of her caste. A rough candour made his voice sound harsh. But she was not offended by it; she listened to him although out of his rough words there came a gust which seemed likely to overthrow all that she had long looked upon as cultured, correct, respectable, irreproachable, moral and aristocratic. It was as though her reading, like a breeze from the sea or the dunes, had suddenly removed and blown away from her all the pettiness, the miserable distortion of the dwarf plant with its aping of greatness; all the everlasting strife of opinions, interests and prejudices waged in and around all those creatures of the world, the women of her set. He noticed it, with a thrill ofhappiness; and he knew that they understood each other. There had sprung up between them the common understanding, the common discussion of things that are never discussed in current conversation.And, because of his happiness, he knew that he loved her, even though it was late in the day, even though it was too late. He had never known a love like that; he felt it now for the first, the very first time, that wave of exultant, smiling happiness, but at the same time he felt it like a shadow, a grief, a regret for what might have been. She had not yet felt it like that, a regret for what might have been, because she was living again, because she was living for the first time, late but not too late, since she was living at last in a real, intense, pulsating life; but to him, the man who had lived but only never loved, it came at once, came as regret for what might have been....And his love seemed never likely to become anything else than just that: regret....

Chapter XXIV

It was not until he was standing in front of her, at the Hague, that he knew, in his innermost soul, that he had come back to Holland because of her and of her alone. It struck him at once that her eyes were brighter, her movements younger, that her voice sounded clearer.“I have read your book!” was the first thing that she said to him, radiantly.“Well?” he asked, while his deep, almost sombre eyes laughed in his rough, bronzed face.She would not tell him that the book,Peace, written in his clear, luminous style, prophesying in ringing tones the great watchword of the future, had consoled her for his three months’ absence. She managed to speak of it in terms of quiet appreciation, betraying no sign of her enthusiasm except by an added brightness in her eyes and a curious lilt in her voice, with its echo of summer and of carolling birds. The book was a great success, written as it were in one breath, as though he had uttered it in a single sentence of quiet knowledge, warning them of the coming changes in the world; in a single sentence of quiet consolation, foretelling its future destinies. There was in his words, in that one long sentence of prophetic consolation, an irresistiblesweetness, a magic charm which affected for a moment even the most sceptical of his readers, even though they scoffed at it immediately afterwards; something wonderful, inspired ... and so simple that the word was spoken almost without art, only with a note that sounded strangely clear, as though echoing from some higher plane. He had thought out the book during his lecturing-period in Holland and Germany; he had written it up there, high up in the Alps, with his eyes roaming over the ice-bound horizons; and it had often seemed to him as if Peace were waving her argent banners in the pure air, her joyous processions descending from the eternal snows of the upper air to the pollution of the lower, to trumpet forth with blithe clarions the holy tidings, the fair, unfaltering prophecy.... The book had comforted her; she had read it in the Woods, on the dunes, by the sea; and, in the warm summer air, with its tang of salt, she had sat with the book in her hands and felt him with her, though absent.... She knew the sentences by heart; but she tempered her enthusiasm, lest she should betray herself. And, when she had spoken of the book and was silent for a moment, he said:“And now tell me about yourself! What have you been doing all these months?”“What have I been doing?...”“Yes. You must have done something besides reading myPeace!”She almost blushed; and a thrill went through her, that catch at her throat and grip at her heart which his step, his voice, his glance could still always give her; and she was not able to answer at once. Yes, really she had done nothing that summer except read hisPeace! So it seemed to her for a moment. But, when she recovered from that sudden wave of emotion, she reflected that it was not so; that she had read other things; that she had dreamt, had thought; that she had lived! It was very strange, but she reflected ... that she had lived!It was as though both of them had much to say to each other and yet did not know how to say it. Van der Welcke was not at home; and they talked together for a long time of indifferent things. He felt all the while that a vague question was rising to his lips, a question hardly formulated even in his mind. He longed to ask her something, such a question as a brother’s tenderness might have prompted, to which she would answer with a sister’s ready sympathy. But he did not know how to speak; and so he buried within himself that strange bright tenderness which longed to give itself expression, to ask its questions; and he locked himself up in his deep, mournful seriousness, the sombreness of a middle-aged man. She also, opposite him, was the same, sat and spoke like a middle-aged woman; he remarked the soft grey of her curling hair; and both of them, serious, almost indifferent, talkedquietly, if sympathetically, of casual things.... And yet he felt that, deep down in herself, she was changed. She had never looked like that before, never spoken so clearly, with such young and lively gestures. He noticed that she had been reading, that she had read other books than hisPeace; and, when he told her of the world of misery which he had seen quite lately in Germany, she replied in a tone of compassion which struck him, because it was no more the shuddering pity of a woman of the world for the misery that swarms far beneath her like vermin, but true compassion, the welling up of a new and generous youth in her soul, an enthusiasm now experienced for the very first time. How sincerely her answer rang, how fervent were the words in which she uttered it! He was astonished and told her so, told her that he would never have suspected such sincerity, such fervour, such capacity for pity in a woman of her caste. But she defended her caste, especially because she did not wish to be too exuberant in her new youth and new life and was perpetually suppressing herself. And so now, to hide her feelings, she defended her caste: did he not think that there were others who had the power of feeling as she did for the misery of the world, women like herself, women of her caste, not merely those who perform their perfunctory little works of charity, but other women who welcome the new ideas and above all the new sentiments of universalbrotherhood, women who will perhaps stamp them on their coming children, are already implanting them, germ by germ, so that later, soon indeed, they will bear a new generation whose lives will be based on those sentiments of brotherhood? He was surprised at what she said, but he brushed it aside with a rough gesture, while a glance of hatred flashed from his sombre, brooding eyes, deep-set in his rough face—a glance that was sometimes anguished as though with pain—and he said to her that this was not true, that it could not be, that her whole caste was nothing but egoism, nothing but hypocrisy, vast and monstrous, its hypocrisy perhaps even more colossal than its egoism, and that he was surprised at himself for having any friendly feeling towards her, a woman of her caste. A rough candour made his voice sound harsh. But she was not offended by it; she listened to him although out of his rough words there came a gust which seemed likely to overthrow all that she had long looked upon as cultured, correct, respectable, irreproachable, moral and aristocratic. It was as though her reading, like a breeze from the sea or the dunes, had suddenly removed and blown away from her all the pettiness, the miserable distortion of the dwarf plant with its aping of greatness; all the everlasting strife of opinions, interests and prejudices waged in and around all those creatures of the world, the women of her set. He noticed it, with a thrill ofhappiness; and he knew that they understood each other. There had sprung up between them the common understanding, the common discussion of things that are never discussed in current conversation.And, because of his happiness, he knew that he loved her, even though it was late in the day, even though it was too late. He had never known a love like that; he felt it now for the first, the very first time, that wave of exultant, smiling happiness, but at the same time he felt it like a shadow, a grief, a regret for what might have been. She had not yet felt it like that, a regret for what might have been, because she was living again, because she was living for the first time, late but not too late, since she was living at last in a real, intense, pulsating life; but to him, the man who had lived but only never loved, it came at once, came as regret for what might have been....And his love seemed never likely to become anything else than just that: regret....

It was not until he was standing in front of her, at the Hague, that he knew, in his innermost soul, that he had come back to Holland because of her and of her alone. It struck him at once that her eyes were brighter, her movements younger, that her voice sounded clearer.

“I have read your book!” was the first thing that she said to him, radiantly.

“Well?” he asked, while his deep, almost sombre eyes laughed in his rough, bronzed face.

She would not tell him that the book,Peace, written in his clear, luminous style, prophesying in ringing tones the great watchword of the future, had consoled her for his three months’ absence. She managed to speak of it in terms of quiet appreciation, betraying no sign of her enthusiasm except by an added brightness in her eyes and a curious lilt in her voice, with its echo of summer and of carolling birds. The book was a great success, written as it were in one breath, as though he had uttered it in a single sentence of quiet knowledge, warning them of the coming changes in the world; in a single sentence of quiet consolation, foretelling its future destinies. There was in his words, in that one long sentence of prophetic consolation, an irresistiblesweetness, a magic charm which affected for a moment even the most sceptical of his readers, even though they scoffed at it immediately afterwards; something wonderful, inspired ... and so simple that the word was spoken almost without art, only with a note that sounded strangely clear, as though echoing from some higher plane. He had thought out the book during his lecturing-period in Holland and Germany; he had written it up there, high up in the Alps, with his eyes roaming over the ice-bound horizons; and it had often seemed to him as if Peace were waving her argent banners in the pure air, her joyous processions descending from the eternal snows of the upper air to the pollution of the lower, to trumpet forth with blithe clarions the holy tidings, the fair, unfaltering prophecy.... The book had comforted her; she had read it in the Woods, on the dunes, by the sea; and, in the warm summer air, with its tang of salt, she had sat with the book in her hands and felt him with her, though absent.... She knew the sentences by heart; but she tempered her enthusiasm, lest she should betray herself. And, when she had spoken of the book and was silent for a moment, he said:

“And now tell me about yourself! What have you been doing all these months?”

“What have I been doing?...”

“Yes. You must have done something besides reading myPeace!”

She almost blushed; and a thrill went through her, that catch at her throat and grip at her heart which his step, his voice, his glance could still always give her; and she was not able to answer at once. Yes, really she had done nothing that summer except read hisPeace! So it seemed to her for a moment. But, when she recovered from that sudden wave of emotion, she reflected that it was not so; that she had read other things; that she had dreamt, had thought; that she had lived! It was very strange, but she reflected ... that she had lived!

It was as though both of them had much to say to each other and yet did not know how to say it. Van der Welcke was not at home; and they talked together for a long time of indifferent things. He felt all the while that a vague question was rising to his lips, a question hardly formulated even in his mind. He longed to ask her something, such a question as a brother’s tenderness might have prompted, to which she would answer with a sister’s ready sympathy. But he did not know how to speak; and so he buried within himself that strange bright tenderness which longed to give itself expression, to ask its questions; and he locked himself up in his deep, mournful seriousness, the sombreness of a middle-aged man. She also, opposite him, was the same, sat and spoke like a middle-aged woman; he remarked the soft grey of her curling hair; and both of them, serious, almost indifferent, talkedquietly, if sympathetically, of casual things.... And yet he felt that, deep down in herself, she was changed. She had never looked like that before, never spoken so clearly, with such young and lively gestures. He noticed that she had been reading, that she had read other books than hisPeace; and, when he told her of the world of misery which he had seen quite lately in Germany, she replied in a tone of compassion which struck him, because it was no more the shuddering pity of a woman of the world for the misery that swarms far beneath her like vermin, but true compassion, the welling up of a new and generous youth in her soul, an enthusiasm now experienced for the very first time. How sincerely her answer rang, how fervent were the words in which she uttered it! He was astonished and told her so, told her that he would never have suspected such sincerity, such fervour, such capacity for pity in a woman of her caste. But she defended her caste, especially because she did not wish to be too exuberant in her new youth and new life and was perpetually suppressing herself. And so now, to hide her feelings, she defended her caste: did he not think that there were others who had the power of feeling as she did for the misery of the world, women like herself, women of her caste, not merely those who perform their perfunctory little works of charity, but other women who welcome the new ideas and above all the new sentiments of universalbrotherhood, women who will perhaps stamp them on their coming children, are already implanting them, germ by germ, so that later, soon indeed, they will bear a new generation whose lives will be based on those sentiments of brotherhood? He was surprised at what she said, but he brushed it aside with a rough gesture, while a glance of hatred flashed from his sombre, brooding eyes, deep-set in his rough face—a glance that was sometimes anguished as though with pain—and he said to her that this was not true, that it could not be, that her whole caste was nothing but egoism, nothing but hypocrisy, vast and monstrous, its hypocrisy perhaps even more colossal than its egoism, and that he was surprised at himself for having any friendly feeling towards her, a woman of her caste. A rough candour made his voice sound harsh. But she was not offended by it; she listened to him although out of his rough words there came a gust which seemed likely to overthrow all that she had long looked upon as cultured, correct, respectable, irreproachable, moral and aristocratic. It was as though her reading, like a breeze from the sea or the dunes, had suddenly removed and blown away from her all the pettiness, the miserable distortion of the dwarf plant with its aping of greatness; all the everlasting strife of opinions, interests and prejudices waged in and around all those creatures of the world, the women of her set. He noticed it, with a thrill ofhappiness; and he knew that they understood each other. There had sprung up between them the common understanding, the common discussion of things that are never discussed in current conversation.

And, because of his happiness, he knew that he loved her, even though it was late in the day, even though it was too late. He had never known a love like that; he felt it now for the first, the very first time, that wave of exultant, smiling happiness, but at the same time he felt it like a shadow, a grief, a regret for what might have been. She had not yet felt it like that, a regret for what might have been, because she was living again, because she was living for the first time, late but not too late, since she was living at last in a real, intense, pulsating life; but to him, the man who had lived but only never loved, it came at once, came as regret for what might have been....

And his love seemed never likely to become anything else than just that: regret....

Chapter XXVIn these days, when Constance felt herself becoming so strangely young and alive—she who for so long believed that she had never, never lived—she was compelled to step outside that life dominated purely by feeling. Van Vreeswijck came to her one evening and sat talking for hours. She liked him; she valued him as a good friend who, notwithstanding that he really belonged to the most insufferable section of the Court set, had shown that he was not too much afraid of degrading himself by associating with Van der Welcke, with her or even with Brauws, though he loudly and sweepingly condemned Brauws’ views. She, in her new pride of life, looked down upon him, with a kindly contempt, as one of the little people in the narrow little circle, a humming-top spinning around itself and around other humming-tops, just another figure in the merry-go-round which they represented to her, all of them; but she valued his unaffected friendship and, though she thought him anything but a great soul, she did not think him a base or evil soul. And so she spoke to him sympathetically that evening and promised to help him.She promised; and yet it was exceedingly difficult. A new honesty had sprung up in her, making her hesitate to whom to turn first. She had meant tospeak to Van der Welcke the next morning, in quite an ordinary way. But, when she saw him for a moment before he went out, he seemed to her to be suppressing some secret grief deep down in himself: his blue boyish eyes were overcast, his mouth half-sulking, as on rainy days when he was not able to go cycling; and yet it was fine now, a fine autumn day, and he came down in his cycling-suit, fetched his bicycle, said that he was going a long way, that he would perhaps not be back for lunch. She suspected in him a craving to get away, as fast as possible and as far as possible, and to deaden with that wild speed the pain of his gnawing grief. But, in the soft glow of her new youth, which illuminated everything within her and around her, she had not the heart to tell him what she was going to do, what she had promised to do, though in her secret self she thought it dishonest not to tell him straight out. So she said nothing, let him go. She looked after him for a moment, watched the angry curve of his shoulders, as he pedalled desperately, in his mad craving to get away, far away.She sighed, felt sorry for him, she no longer knew why or wherefore ... But she had promised Van Vreeswijck; and perhaps, she thought, it would be best so. She went out therefore, took the tram to the Bezuidenhout, rang at Bertha’s door, found her at home. In the hall, the removers’ men were busy packing china and glass in big cases. Louise andFrans were going from room to room with a list in their hands, making notes of the furniture which Mamma would want at Baarn. The little villa had been taken.Constance found Bertha upstairs in Van Naghel’s study. She was sitting at an open window in the large room with its dark, heavy furniture, gazing into the garden, with her hands in her lap. She seemed calmer than she had been the other evening, at Mamma’s. She sat there in her black dress, her face old and drawn, but calmer now; and her eyes never left the garden, a town garden full of rose-trees and fragrant in the late summer air. But all around her the room was gloomy and deadly and desolate. The book-cases were empty: the books had been taken out and divided among the boys. Only the large bronze inkstand remained on the writing-table. The furniture stood stiff, formal, stripped, unused, lifeless, as though awaiting the day of the sale. The bare walls showed the marks of the etchings and family-portraits that had been taken down.Bertha rose when Constance entered; she kissed her and sat down again at once, sinking into her chair and folding her hands in her lap. And Constance asked if she could have a moment’s serious conversation with her. A shade of weariness passed over Bertha’s face, as if to convey that she had had so many serious conversations lately and would rathergo on gazing into the garden. She lifted her eyes almost sorrowfully from the riot of roses, turned them on Constance, asked what it was about. And Constance began to tell her: Van Vreeswijck had been with her for a long time the evening before and had told her that he had loved Marianne for so long, so long....Bertha was interested for a moment, seemed to wake from a dream:“Van Vreeswijck?” she asked.Constance went on. He had never said a word to Marianne, because he feared, was almost certain, indeed, that she did not care for him. Had it not been mentioned that they were moving to Baarn, he would perhaps not have ventured to speak even now. But this threatened change had suddenly compelled him to open his heart ... to her, to Constance. And he had begged Constance to ask Bertha, to ask Marianne herself if he might hope ... perhaps later....“Van Vreeswijck?” Bertha repeated.Two months ago, though she had never been a match-making mother, she would have welcomed this proposal, would have rejoiced at it: Van Vreeswijck was a man of good family, belonged to their own circle and to the Court set, had a little money; not very young, perhaps, but a good-looking, pleasant, well-bred fellow. But now she did not know, showed little or no interest after that momentaryflicker and went on dully, with her hands lying motionless on her black dress:“Well, I have nothing against it, Constance. If Marianne likes the idea, I do too.”Her voice sounded as if she were withdrawing herself from everything, including her children’s interests. She sat there, just blankly staring, leaving everything to them. Louise and Frans went through the house looking out the furniture for which there would be room at Baarn. Constance heard their voices on the stairs:“So,” Louise was saying, “we have, in addition to the furniture in Mamma’s bedroom, in Marianne’s and mine, enough for one spare-room; then there’s the piano, from the drawing-room, and the china-cabinet....”“Isn’t the china-cabinet ever so much too big ... for those small rooms down there?”“Yes, perhaps.... Perhaps we had better leave the china-cabinet....”Bertha heard as well as Constance: perhaps Louise and Frans were speaking loudly in the passage on purpose. Bertha, however, did not stir: her eyes remained vague, her hands lifeless. It was obviously a matter of supreme indifference to her whether they took the china-cabinet with them or not....And, as she did not speak at all, Constance was obliged to ask:“Would you mind, Bertha, if I just spoke to Marianne?”“Very well,” said Bertha, “do.”“Now? Here?”“Yes,” said Bertha.Constance rose, opened the door.“So that’s two more tables ... two sofas,” Frans counted, making notes on his list.“Louise,” said Constance, at the door, “would you ask Marianne to come here a moment?”She sat down again by her sister, affectionately, took her hand, brimming over with pity for the tired woman whom she had always looked upon as an ever capable, busy woman of the world, now exhausted with all the thousand cares of her life and smitten by the sudden blow that had befallen her. And Constance’ heart beat anxiously in dread of what was coming: she trembled, felt her eyes become wet....Marianne entered, pale, almost diaphanous; and her black blouse made her look a frail little figure of mourning, slender and drooping. For the thing which she could not conceal in her innermost self was no longer a light shining from her, visible to all: it was now a cloud around her, still visible, but as a shadow of grief, whereas but lately it had been a glow of happiness. Constance at once drew her to her, kissed her, held her to her. And she could not find words. Bertha did not speak.“Marianne ...” Constance began.“Are you angry, Aunt Constance?”“No, darling, why....”“Yes, you are angry with me.”“Why, Marianne!”“Yes, you are different. I have seen it for some time; there’s something, I know....”It was no longer the joyous, playful, almost mischievous voice in which she had said this before. It now sounded rather like a cry of fear, because it, “that,” seemed so obvious that every one was bound to see it, that Aunt Constance herself must needs see it ... and be angry.“Really, Marianne, I am not angry. But I wanted to speak to you alone....”“Oh, then youareangry!” she said, passionately, almost hiding herself in Constance’ arms. “Don’t be angry!” she said, almost entreatingly. “Do tell me that you will try ... not to be angry with me!”She betrayed herself almost entirely, incapable of keeping back that which had once shone from her and which now nearly threatened to sob itself from her. Constance could find no words.“We shall soon be going away, Auntie!” said Marianne, her features wrung with grief. “And then you will not see me any more ... and then ... then perhaps you will never have any reason to be angry with me again....”And then, all at once, she gave a sob, an irresistiblesob, jarring every nerve with a shock that seemed to leave her rigid. She shut her eyes, buried her face in Constance’ shoulder and remained lying like this, after that one convulsive sob, motionless, pale, as though she were dying, as though devastated with sorrow. Bertha, opposite her, stared at her vaguely, with her hands lying helplessly on her black dress.And Constance could find no words. Time after time she thought of mentioning Van Vreeswijck’s name, time after time the name died away on her lips. She gently urged Marianne to control herself, assuring her that she was not angry, had never been angry. And for a moment, thinking of herself, she felt afraid.If love could be now gladness and now mourning, as it had been and was in this suffering, love-stricken child, should it not be the same with her—that gladness and oh, perhaps later, O God, that mourning!—with her, the middle-aged woman, who felt herself growing younger and a new life coursing through her: at first, in the soft spring flush of a girl’s dreams; now in the summer glory of a woman’s—a young woman’s—love? But there was a mirror opposite her; and she saw Marianne grief-smitten, shaken with sobs ... and in herself she saw nothing! She seemed to have the power to hide her happiness in her secret self: her agony—O God!—she would also hide later in her secretself. She saw nothing in herself. And she knew that nobody saw it in her. It remained secretly, mysteriously hidden. Adolphine, Cateau, the Ruyvenaers, all of them talked about her husband and Marianne: she knew it; but she also knew that they never talked about herself and Brauws ... though she had now known him for months, though he was the friend of the house and came to their house almost daily. He was a friend of Van der Welcke’s, he was a friend of the house and a very well-known man; and that was all. It was not visible to anybody, to anybody....Oh, was it not strange? That this same feeling, which she bore in her innermost self, unseen by any, should shine within her as a sun, while with Marianne it had shone out, for all the world to see, as an illicit joy ... and was now streaming forth from her, in a convulsive sob, as an illicit sorrow. What she, the woman, hid within her the child could not hide within her, as though her soul were too slight for it, so slight that it had glowed through her soul as through alabaster and now flowed from it as from alabaster.... Oh, was it not strange, was it not strange? After all, she did not hide it intentionally, for she, the middle-aged woman had never, in her new young life, thought of the people outside ... in connection with her reviving youth! But it was so, it was so, beyond a doubt.... And it made her feel strong: it seemed to her a gracethat had been accorded her, this power to live and go on living a new life deep in her secret self, invisible to the people outside, this power to live and love....She felt grateful: something sang in her like a hymn of thanksgiving; but she was filled with compassion for Marianne. The girl, despite Constance’ cheering words, still lay motionless against her shoulder, with closed eyes, as though dead. Constance now gently forced her to rise, led her away without a word ... while Bertha remained sitting, just followed them both with her dull, indifferent eyes, then looked out at the roses in the garden, her hands lying helplessly in her black lap.Constance opened the door, led the girl into the drawing-room. The carpet had been taken up, the curtains taken down; the furniture stood cold and lifeless on the bare boards.“Marianne, darling, do listen to me now!” Constance forced herself to say, in a firmer voice. “I am not angry and I wanted to speak to you ... and I have something to ask you.... But first tell me: do you believe that I care for you and that anything I say and ask comes from nothing but my love for you?”Marianne opened her eyes:“Yes, Auntie.”“Well, then,” said Constance, “Van Vreeswijck....”But Marianne suddenly drew herself up where they were sitting—she with Constance’ arms around her—nervous, terrified, at once knowing, understanding:“No, Auntie, no!” she almost screamed.“Marianne!...”“No, Auntie, oh, no, no, no! I can’t do it, I can’t do it!”And she threw herself back, sobbed out her words, as though she no longer dared fling herself into Constance’ arms.“Marianne, he is very fond of you ... and he is such a good fellow....”“Oh, Auntie, no, no, no!... No, no, Auntie, no!... I can’t do it!”Constance was silent. Then she said:“So, it’s no, darling?”“No, Auntie, no, no!... I don’t care for him, I can never, never care for him! Oh, no, no, it is cruel of you, if you ask that of me, if you want to force me into it!... I don’t care for him.... There is ... there is some one else....”She was silent, stared before her like a madwoman, with the same fixed stare as her mother. And suddenly she became very still, accepting her anguish, and said, gently, with a heart-rending smile:“No, Auntie ... no. I would rather go ... with Mamma and Louise ... to Baarn. We shall live very pleasantly there ... cosily, the three ofus together.... Marietje will join us later, from her boarding-school.... Karel....”She tried to utter just a word of interest in her mother, sisters and brothers, but her indifferent, dead voice belied her. There was nothing in her but what had once shone from her, what was now trying to sob from her....Constance clasped her in her arms:“My child!”“No, Auntie, you will tell him, won’t you?... Tell him that I am sorry ... but ... but that I don’t care for him.... I care ... I care for some one else....”And now, without speaking a word, raising her beseeching, tear-filled eyes to her aunt’s, she said to Constance, without speaking a word, told her only with her beseeching glance, told her that she loved ... that she loved Uncle Henri ... and that she couldn’t help it; that she knew it was very wrong of her; that she begged her aunt to forgive her and implored her please not to be angry; that she entreated only to be allowed to suffer and sob about it; but that for the rest she hoped for nothing more from life, nothing, nothing; that she would go quietly to Baarn, with her mother and sisters, and try to manage to live there and pine away silently in her grief....And Constance, as she held her in her arms, thought:“Living ... Living.... This child ... this poor child ... is living early; and, if I have begun to live late ... O God, O God, must I also suffer as she is doing ... must I also suffer some day ... soon, perhaps ... if one cannot have life without suffering?...”

Chapter XXV

In these days, when Constance felt herself becoming so strangely young and alive—she who for so long believed that she had never, never lived—she was compelled to step outside that life dominated purely by feeling. Van Vreeswijck came to her one evening and sat talking for hours. She liked him; she valued him as a good friend who, notwithstanding that he really belonged to the most insufferable section of the Court set, had shown that he was not too much afraid of degrading himself by associating with Van der Welcke, with her or even with Brauws, though he loudly and sweepingly condemned Brauws’ views. She, in her new pride of life, looked down upon him, with a kindly contempt, as one of the little people in the narrow little circle, a humming-top spinning around itself and around other humming-tops, just another figure in the merry-go-round which they represented to her, all of them; but she valued his unaffected friendship and, though she thought him anything but a great soul, she did not think him a base or evil soul. And so she spoke to him sympathetically that evening and promised to help him.She promised; and yet it was exceedingly difficult. A new honesty had sprung up in her, making her hesitate to whom to turn first. She had meant tospeak to Van der Welcke the next morning, in quite an ordinary way. But, when she saw him for a moment before he went out, he seemed to her to be suppressing some secret grief deep down in himself: his blue boyish eyes were overcast, his mouth half-sulking, as on rainy days when he was not able to go cycling; and yet it was fine now, a fine autumn day, and he came down in his cycling-suit, fetched his bicycle, said that he was going a long way, that he would perhaps not be back for lunch. She suspected in him a craving to get away, as fast as possible and as far as possible, and to deaden with that wild speed the pain of his gnawing grief. But, in the soft glow of her new youth, which illuminated everything within her and around her, she had not the heart to tell him what she was going to do, what she had promised to do, though in her secret self she thought it dishonest not to tell him straight out. So she said nothing, let him go. She looked after him for a moment, watched the angry curve of his shoulders, as he pedalled desperately, in his mad craving to get away, far away.She sighed, felt sorry for him, she no longer knew why or wherefore ... But she had promised Van Vreeswijck; and perhaps, she thought, it would be best so. She went out therefore, took the tram to the Bezuidenhout, rang at Bertha’s door, found her at home. In the hall, the removers’ men were busy packing china and glass in big cases. Louise andFrans were going from room to room with a list in their hands, making notes of the furniture which Mamma would want at Baarn. The little villa had been taken.Constance found Bertha upstairs in Van Naghel’s study. She was sitting at an open window in the large room with its dark, heavy furniture, gazing into the garden, with her hands in her lap. She seemed calmer than she had been the other evening, at Mamma’s. She sat there in her black dress, her face old and drawn, but calmer now; and her eyes never left the garden, a town garden full of rose-trees and fragrant in the late summer air. But all around her the room was gloomy and deadly and desolate. The book-cases were empty: the books had been taken out and divided among the boys. Only the large bronze inkstand remained on the writing-table. The furniture stood stiff, formal, stripped, unused, lifeless, as though awaiting the day of the sale. The bare walls showed the marks of the etchings and family-portraits that had been taken down.Bertha rose when Constance entered; she kissed her and sat down again at once, sinking into her chair and folding her hands in her lap. And Constance asked if she could have a moment’s serious conversation with her. A shade of weariness passed over Bertha’s face, as if to convey that she had had so many serious conversations lately and would rathergo on gazing into the garden. She lifted her eyes almost sorrowfully from the riot of roses, turned them on Constance, asked what it was about. And Constance began to tell her: Van Vreeswijck had been with her for a long time the evening before and had told her that he had loved Marianne for so long, so long....Bertha was interested for a moment, seemed to wake from a dream:“Van Vreeswijck?” she asked.Constance went on. He had never said a word to Marianne, because he feared, was almost certain, indeed, that she did not care for him. Had it not been mentioned that they were moving to Baarn, he would perhaps not have ventured to speak even now. But this threatened change had suddenly compelled him to open his heart ... to her, to Constance. And he had begged Constance to ask Bertha, to ask Marianne herself if he might hope ... perhaps later....“Van Vreeswijck?” Bertha repeated.Two months ago, though she had never been a match-making mother, she would have welcomed this proposal, would have rejoiced at it: Van Vreeswijck was a man of good family, belonged to their own circle and to the Court set, had a little money; not very young, perhaps, but a good-looking, pleasant, well-bred fellow. But now she did not know, showed little or no interest after that momentaryflicker and went on dully, with her hands lying motionless on her black dress:“Well, I have nothing against it, Constance. If Marianne likes the idea, I do too.”Her voice sounded as if she were withdrawing herself from everything, including her children’s interests. She sat there, just blankly staring, leaving everything to them. Louise and Frans went through the house looking out the furniture for which there would be room at Baarn. Constance heard their voices on the stairs:“So,” Louise was saying, “we have, in addition to the furniture in Mamma’s bedroom, in Marianne’s and mine, enough for one spare-room; then there’s the piano, from the drawing-room, and the china-cabinet....”“Isn’t the china-cabinet ever so much too big ... for those small rooms down there?”“Yes, perhaps.... Perhaps we had better leave the china-cabinet....”Bertha heard as well as Constance: perhaps Louise and Frans were speaking loudly in the passage on purpose. Bertha, however, did not stir: her eyes remained vague, her hands lifeless. It was obviously a matter of supreme indifference to her whether they took the china-cabinet with them or not....And, as she did not speak at all, Constance was obliged to ask:“Would you mind, Bertha, if I just spoke to Marianne?”“Very well,” said Bertha, “do.”“Now? Here?”“Yes,” said Bertha.Constance rose, opened the door.“So that’s two more tables ... two sofas,” Frans counted, making notes on his list.“Louise,” said Constance, at the door, “would you ask Marianne to come here a moment?”She sat down again by her sister, affectionately, took her hand, brimming over with pity for the tired woman whom she had always looked upon as an ever capable, busy woman of the world, now exhausted with all the thousand cares of her life and smitten by the sudden blow that had befallen her. And Constance’ heart beat anxiously in dread of what was coming: she trembled, felt her eyes become wet....Marianne entered, pale, almost diaphanous; and her black blouse made her look a frail little figure of mourning, slender and drooping. For the thing which she could not conceal in her innermost self was no longer a light shining from her, visible to all: it was now a cloud around her, still visible, but as a shadow of grief, whereas but lately it had been a glow of happiness. Constance at once drew her to her, kissed her, held her to her. And she could not find words. Bertha did not speak.“Marianne ...” Constance began.“Are you angry, Aunt Constance?”“No, darling, why....”“Yes, you are angry with me.”“Why, Marianne!”“Yes, you are different. I have seen it for some time; there’s something, I know....”It was no longer the joyous, playful, almost mischievous voice in which she had said this before. It now sounded rather like a cry of fear, because it, “that,” seemed so obvious that every one was bound to see it, that Aunt Constance herself must needs see it ... and be angry.“Really, Marianne, I am not angry. But I wanted to speak to you alone....”“Oh, then youareangry!” she said, passionately, almost hiding herself in Constance’ arms. “Don’t be angry!” she said, almost entreatingly. “Do tell me that you will try ... not to be angry with me!”She betrayed herself almost entirely, incapable of keeping back that which had once shone from her and which now nearly threatened to sob itself from her. Constance could find no words.“We shall soon be going away, Auntie!” said Marianne, her features wrung with grief. “And then you will not see me any more ... and then ... then perhaps you will never have any reason to be angry with me again....”And then, all at once, she gave a sob, an irresistiblesob, jarring every nerve with a shock that seemed to leave her rigid. She shut her eyes, buried her face in Constance’ shoulder and remained lying like this, after that one convulsive sob, motionless, pale, as though she were dying, as though devastated with sorrow. Bertha, opposite her, stared at her vaguely, with her hands lying helplessly on her black dress.And Constance could find no words. Time after time she thought of mentioning Van Vreeswijck’s name, time after time the name died away on her lips. She gently urged Marianne to control herself, assuring her that she was not angry, had never been angry. And for a moment, thinking of herself, she felt afraid.If love could be now gladness and now mourning, as it had been and was in this suffering, love-stricken child, should it not be the same with her—that gladness and oh, perhaps later, O God, that mourning!—with her, the middle-aged woman, who felt herself growing younger and a new life coursing through her: at first, in the soft spring flush of a girl’s dreams; now in the summer glory of a woman’s—a young woman’s—love? But there was a mirror opposite her; and she saw Marianne grief-smitten, shaken with sobs ... and in herself she saw nothing! She seemed to have the power to hide her happiness in her secret self: her agony—O God!—she would also hide later in her secretself. She saw nothing in herself. And she knew that nobody saw it in her. It remained secretly, mysteriously hidden. Adolphine, Cateau, the Ruyvenaers, all of them talked about her husband and Marianne: she knew it; but she also knew that they never talked about herself and Brauws ... though she had now known him for months, though he was the friend of the house and came to their house almost daily. He was a friend of Van der Welcke’s, he was a friend of the house and a very well-known man; and that was all. It was not visible to anybody, to anybody....Oh, was it not strange? That this same feeling, which she bore in her innermost self, unseen by any, should shine within her as a sun, while with Marianne it had shone out, for all the world to see, as an illicit joy ... and was now streaming forth from her, in a convulsive sob, as an illicit sorrow. What she, the woman, hid within her the child could not hide within her, as though her soul were too slight for it, so slight that it had glowed through her soul as through alabaster and now flowed from it as from alabaster.... Oh, was it not strange, was it not strange? After all, she did not hide it intentionally, for she, the middle-aged woman had never, in her new young life, thought of the people outside ... in connection with her reviving youth! But it was so, it was so, beyond a doubt.... And it made her feel strong: it seemed to her a gracethat had been accorded her, this power to live and go on living a new life deep in her secret self, invisible to the people outside, this power to live and love....She felt grateful: something sang in her like a hymn of thanksgiving; but she was filled with compassion for Marianne. The girl, despite Constance’ cheering words, still lay motionless against her shoulder, with closed eyes, as though dead. Constance now gently forced her to rise, led her away without a word ... while Bertha remained sitting, just followed them both with her dull, indifferent eyes, then looked out at the roses in the garden, her hands lying helplessly in her black lap.Constance opened the door, led the girl into the drawing-room. The carpet had been taken up, the curtains taken down; the furniture stood cold and lifeless on the bare boards.“Marianne, darling, do listen to me now!” Constance forced herself to say, in a firmer voice. “I am not angry and I wanted to speak to you ... and I have something to ask you.... But first tell me: do you believe that I care for you and that anything I say and ask comes from nothing but my love for you?”Marianne opened her eyes:“Yes, Auntie.”“Well, then,” said Constance, “Van Vreeswijck....”But Marianne suddenly drew herself up where they were sitting—she with Constance’ arms around her—nervous, terrified, at once knowing, understanding:“No, Auntie, no!” she almost screamed.“Marianne!...”“No, Auntie, oh, no, no, no! I can’t do it, I can’t do it!”And she threw herself back, sobbed out her words, as though she no longer dared fling herself into Constance’ arms.“Marianne, he is very fond of you ... and he is such a good fellow....”“Oh, Auntie, no, no, no!... No, no, Auntie, no!... I can’t do it!”Constance was silent. Then she said:“So, it’s no, darling?”“No, Auntie, no, no!... I don’t care for him, I can never, never care for him! Oh, no, no, it is cruel of you, if you ask that of me, if you want to force me into it!... I don’t care for him.... There is ... there is some one else....”She was silent, stared before her like a madwoman, with the same fixed stare as her mother. And suddenly she became very still, accepting her anguish, and said, gently, with a heart-rending smile:“No, Auntie ... no. I would rather go ... with Mamma and Louise ... to Baarn. We shall live very pleasantly there ... cosily, the three ofus together.... Marietje will join us later, from her boarding-school.... Karel....”She tried to utter just a word of interest in her mother, sisters and brothers, but her indifferent, dead voice belied her. There was nothing in her but what had once shone from her, what was now trying to sob from her....Constance clasped her in her arms:“My child!”“No, Auntie, you will tell him, won’t you?... Tell him that I am sorry ... but ... but that I don’t care for him.... I care ... I care for some one else....”And now, without speaking a word, raising her beseeching, tear-filled eyes to her aunt’s, she said to Constance, without speaking a word, told her only with her beseeching glance, told her that she loved ... that she loved Uncle Henri ... and that she couldn’t help it; that she knew it was very wrong of her; that she begged her aunt to forgive her and implored her please not to be angry; that she entreated only to be allowed to suffer and sob about it; but that for the rest she hoped for nothing more from life, nothing, nothing; that she would go quietly to Baarn, with her mother and sisters, and try to manage to live there and pine away silently in her grief....And Constance, as she held her in her arms, thought:“Living ... Living.... This child ... this poor child ... is living early; and, if I have begun to live late ... O God, O God, must I also suffer as she is doing ... must I also suffer some day ... soon, perhaps ... if one cannot have life without suffering?...”

In these days, when Constance felt herself becoming so strangely young and alive—she who for so long believed that she had never, never lived—she was compelled to step outside that life dominated purely by feeling. Van Vreeswijck came to her one evening and sat talking for hours. She liked him; she valued him as a good friend who, notwithstanding that he really belonged to the most insufferable section of the Court set, had shown that he was not too much afraid of degrading himself by associating with Van der Welcke, with her or even with Brauws, though he loudly and sweepingly condemned Brauws’ views. She, in her new pride of life, looked down upon him, with a kindly contempt, as one of the little people in the narrow little circle, a humming-top spinning around itself and around other humming-tops, just another figure in the merry-go-round which they represented to her, all of them; but she valued his unaffected friendship and, though she thought him anything but a great soul, she did not think him a base or evil soul. And so she spoke to him sympathetically that evening and promised to help him.

She promised; and yet it was exceedingly difficult. A new honesty had sprung up in her, making her hesitate to whom to turn first. She had meant tospeak to Van der Welcke the next morning, in quite an ordinary way. But, when she saw him for a moment before he went out, he seemed to her to be suppressing some secret grief deep down in himself: his blue boyish eyes were overcast, his mouth half-sulking, as on rainy days when he was not able to go cycling; and yet it was fine now, a fine autumn day, and he came down in his cycling-suit, fetched his bicycle, said that he was going a long way, that he would perhaps not be back for lunch. She suspected in him a craving to get away, as fast as possible and as far as possible, and to deaden with that wild speed the pain of his gnawing grief. But, in the soft glow of her new youth, which illuminated everything within her and around her, she had not the heart to tell him what she was going to do, what she had promised to do, though in her secret self she thought it dishonest not to tell him straight out. So she said nothing, let him go. She looked after him for a moment, watched the angry curve of his shoulders, as he pedalled desperately, in his mad craving to get away, far away.

She sighed, felt sorry for him, she no longer knew why or wherefore ... But she had promised Van Vreeswijck; and perhaps, she thought, it would be best so. She went out therefore, took the tram to the Bezuidenhout, rang at Bertha’s door, found her at home. In the hall, the removers’ men were busy packing china and glass in big cases. Louise andFrans were going from room to room with a list in their hands, making notes of the furniture which Mamma would want at Baarn. The little villa had been taken.

Constance found Bertha upstairs in Van Naghel’s study. She was sitting at an open window in the large room with its dark, heavy furniture, gazing into the garden, with her hands in her lap. She seemed calmer than she had been the other evening, at Mamma’s. She sat there in her black dress, her face old and drawn, but calmer now; and her eyes never left the garden, a town garden full of rose-trees and fragrant in the late summer air. But all around her the room was gloomy and deadly and desolate. The book-cases were empty: the books had been taken out and divided among the boys. Only the large bronze inkstand remained on the writing-table. The furniture stood stiff, formal, stripped, unused, lifeless, as though awaiting the day of the sale. The bare walls showed the marks of the etchings and family-portraits that had been taken down.

Bertha rose when Constance entered; she kissed her and sat down again at once, sinking into her chair and folding her hands in her lap. And Constance asked if she could have a moment’s serious conversation with her. A shade of weariness passed over Bertha’s face, as if to convey that she had had so many serious conversations lately and would rathergo on gazing into the garden. She lifted her eyes almost sorrowfully from the riot of roses, turned them on Constance, asked what it was about. And Constance began to tell her: Van Vreeswijck had been with her for a long time the evening before and had told her that he had loved Marianne for so long, so long....

Bertha was interested for a moment, seemed to wake from a dream:

“Van Vreeswijck?” she asked.

Constance went on. He had never said a word to Marianne, because he feared, was almost certain, indeed, that she did not care for him. Had it not been mentioned that they were moving to Baarn, he would perhaps not have ventured to speak even now. But this threatened change had suddenly compelled him to open his heart ... to her, to Constance. And he had begged Constance to ask Bertha, to ask Marianne herself if he might hope ... perhaps later....

“Van Vreeswijck?” Bertha repeated.

Two months ago, though she had never been a match-making mother, she would have welcomed this proposal, would have rejoiced at it: Van Vreeswijck was a man of good family, belonged to their own circle and to the Court set, had a little money; not very young, perhaps, but a good-looking, pleasant, well-bred fellow. But now she did not know, showed little or no interest after that momentaryflicker and went on dully, with her hands lying motionless on her black dress:

“Well, I have nothing against it, Constance. If Marianne likes the idea, I do too.”

Her voice sounded as if she were withdrawing herself from everything, including her children’s interests. She sat there, just blankly staring, leaving everything to them. Louise and Frans went through the house looking out the furniture for which there would be room at Baarn. Constance heard their voices on the stairs:

“So,” Louise was saying, “we have, in addition to the furniture in Mamma’s bedroom, in Marianne’s and mine, enough for one spare-room; then there’s the piano, from the drawing-room, and the china-cabinet....”

“Isn’t the china-cabinet ever so much too big ... for those small rooms down there?”

“Yes, perhaps.... Perhaps we had better leave the china-cabinet....”

Bertha heard as well as Constance: perhaps Louise and Frans were speaking loudly in the passage on purpose. Bertha, however, did not stir: her eyes remained vague, her hands lifeless. It was obviously a matter of supreme indifference to her whether they took the china-cabinet with them or not....

And, as she did not speak at all, Constance was obliged to ask:

“Would you mind, Bertha, if I just spoke to Marianne?”

“Very well,” said Bertha, “do.”

“Now? Here?”

“Yes,” said Bertha.

Constance rose, opened the door.

“So that’s two more tables ... two sofas,” Frans counted, making notes on his list.

“Louise,” said Constance, at the door, “would you ask Marianne to come here a moment?”

She sat down again by her sister, affectionately, took her hand, brimming over with pity for the tired woman whom she had always looked upon as an ever capable, busy woman of the world, now exhausted with all the thousand cares of her life and smitten by the sudden blow that had befallen her. And Constance’ heart beat anxiously in dread of what was coming: she trembled, felt her eyes become wet....

Marianne entered, pale, almost diaphanous; and her black blouse made her look a frail little figure of mourning, slender and drooping. For the thing which she could not conceal in her innermost self was no longer a light shining from her, visible to all: it was now a cloud around her, still visible, but as a shadow of grief, whereas but lately it had been a glow of happiness. Constance at once drew her to her, kissed her, held her to her. And she could not find words. Bertha did not speak.

“Marianne ...” Constance began.

“Are you angry, Aunt Constance?”

“No, darling, why....”

“Yes, you are angry with me.”

“Why, Marianne!”

“Yes, you are different. I have seen it for some time; there’s something, I know....”

It was no longer the joyous, playful, almost mischievous voice in which she had said this before. It now sounded rather like a cry of fear, because it, “that,” seemed so obvious that every one was bound to see it, that Aunt Constance herself must needs see it ... and be angry.

“Really, Marianne, I am not angry. But I wanted to speak to you alone....”

“Oh, then youareangry!” she said, passionately, almost hiding herself in Constance’ arms. “Don’t be angry!” she said, almost entreatingly. “Do tell me that you will try ... not to be angry with me!”

She betrayed herself almost entirely, incapable of keeping back that which had once shone from her and which now nearly threatened to sob itself from her. Constance could find no words.

“We shall soon be going away, Auntie!” said Marianne, her features wrung with grief. “And then you will not see me any more ... and then ... then perhaps you will never have any reason to be angry with me again....”

And then, all at once, she gave a sob, an irresistiblesob, jarring every nerve with a shock that seemed to leave her rigid. She shut her eyes, buried her face in Constance’ shoulder and remained lying like this, after that one convulsive sob, motionless, pale, as though she were dying, as though devastated with sorrow. Bertha, opposite her, stared at her vaguely, with her hands lying helplessly on her black dress.

And Constance could find no words. Time after time she thought of mentioning Van Vreeswijck’s name, time after time the name died away on her lips. She gently urged Marianne to control herself, assuring her that she was not angry, had never been angry. And for a moment, thinking of herself, she felt afraid.

If love could be now gladness and now mourning, as it had been and was in this suffering, love-stricken child, should it not be the same with her—that gladness and oh, perhaps later, O God, that mourning!—with her, the middle-aged woman, who felt herself growing younger and a new life coursing through her: at first, in the soft spring flush of a girl’s dreams; now in the summer glory of a woman’s—a young woman’s—love? But there was a mirror opposite her; and she saw Marianne grief-smitten, shaken with sobs ... and in herself she saw nothing! She seemed to have the power to hide her happiness in her secret self: her agony—O God!—she would also hide later in her secretself. She saw nothing in herself. And she knew that nobody saw it in her. It remained secretly, mysteriously hidden. Adolphine, Cateau, the Ruyvenaers, all of them talked about her husband and Marianne: she knew it; but she also knew that they never talked about herself and Brauws ... though she had now known him for months, though he was the friend of the house and came to their house almost daily. He was a friend of Van der Welcke’s, he was a friend of the house and a very well-known man; and that was all. It was not visible to anybody, to anybody....

Oh, was it not strange? That this same feeling, which she bore in her innermost self, unseen by any, should shine within her as a sun, while with Marianne it had shone out, for all the world to see, as an illicit joy ... and was now streaming forth from her, in a convulsive sob, as an illicit sorrow. What she, the woman, hid within her the child could not hide within her, as though her soul were too slight for it, so slight that it had glowed through her soul as through alabaster and now flowed from it as from alabaster.... Oh, was it not strange, was it not strange? After all, she did not hide it intentionally, for she, the middle-aged woman had never, in her new young life, thought of the people outside ... in connection with her reviving youth! But it was so, it was so, beyond a doubt.... And it made her feel strong: it seemed to her a gracethat had been accorded her, this power to live and go on living a new life deep in her secret self, invisible to the people outside, this power to live and love....

She felt grateful: something sang in her like a hymn of thanksgiving; but she was filled with compassion for Marianne. The girl, despite Constance’ cheering words, still lay motionless against her shoulder, with closed eyes, as though dead. Constance now gently forced her to rise, led her away without a word ... while Bertha remained sitting, just followed them both with her dull, indifferent eyes, then looked out at the roses in the garden, her hands lying helplessly in her black lap.

Constance opened the door, led the girl into the drawing-room. The carpet had been taken up, the curtains taken down; the furniture stood cold and lifeless on the bare boards.

“Marianne, darling, do listen to me now!” Constance forced herself to say, in a firmer voice. “I am not angry and I wanted to speak to you ... and I have something to ask you.... But first tell me: do you believe that I care for you and that anything I say and ask comes from nothing but my love for you?”

Marianne opened her eyes:

“Yes, Auntie.”

“Well, then,” said Constance, “Van Vreeswijck....”

But Marianne suddenly drew herself up where they were sitting—she with Constance’ arms around her—nervous, terrified, at once knowing, understanding:

“No, Auntie, no!” she almost screamed.

“Marianne!...”

“No, Auntie, oh, no, no, no! I can’t do it, I can’t do it!”

And she threw herself back, sobbed out her words, as though she no longer dared fling herself into Constance’ arms.

“Marianne, he is very fond of you ... and he is such a good fellow....”

“Oh, Auntie, no, no, no!... No, no, Auntie, no!... I can’t do it!”

Constance was silent. Then she said:

“So, it’s no, darling?”

“No, Auntie, no, no!... I don’t care for him, I can never, never care for him! Oh, no, no, it is cruel of you, if you ask that of me, if you want to force me into it!... I don’t care for him.... There is ... there is some one else....”

She was silent, stared before her like a madwoman, with the same fixed stare as her mother. And suddenly she became very still, accepting her anguish, and said, gently, with a heart-rending smile:

“No, Auntie ... no. I would rather go ... with Mamma and Louise ... to Baarn. We shall live very pleasantly there ... cosily, the three ofus together.... Marietje will join us later, from her boarding-school.... Karel....”

She tried to utter just a word of interest in her mother, sisters and brothers, but her indifferent, dead voice belied her. There was nothing in her but what had once shone from her, what was now trying to sob from her....

Constance clasped her in her arms:

“My child!”

“No, Auntie, you will tell him, won’t you?... Tell him that I am sorry ... but ... but that I don’t care for him.... I care ... I care for some one else....”

And now, without speaking a word, raising her beseeching, tear-filled eyes to her aunt’s, she said to Constance, without speaking a word, told her only with her beseeching glance, told her that she loved ... that she loved Uncle Henri ... and that she couldn’t help it; that she knew it was very wrong of her; that she begged her aunt to forgive her and implored her please not to be angry; that she entreated only to be allowed to suffer and sob about it; but that for the rest she hoped for nothing more from life, nothing, nothing; that she would go quietly to Baarn, with her mother and sisters, and try to manage to live there and pine away silently in her grief....

And Constance, as she held her in her arms, thought:

“Living ... Living.... This child ... this poor child ... is living early; and, if I have begun to live late ... O God, O God, must I also suffer as she is doing ... must I also suffer some day ... soon, perhaps ... if one cannot have life without suffering?...”

Chapter XXVIWhen Constance returned home, she was even more troubled than she had been in the morning by what she called her dishonesty towards Van der Welcke. She lunched alone with Addie; Van der Welcke did not come in, was evidently trying to lose himself on his bicycle in the roads outside the Hague and lunching off a sandwich and a glass of beer at a country inn. He did not come home till very late, tired and dusty, and he was in an unbearable mood, as though his surfeit of movement and speed and space had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and not the beneficent anæsthesia which he had expected of it. Roughly, as though dispirited and disgusted, he put away his machine, without bestowing on it the care which he usually gave to it after a long ride, angry with the lifeless steel which had not consoled him, which had not shown itself a friend this time. It was three o’clock; and he went straight to his room to change his clothes.Constance, in her drawing-room, remained uneasy. In her heart there was a deep pity for Marianne; and for him too an almost motherly pity, which made her eyes fill with tears. Oh, when she had found so very much for herself, so much that was broad and lofty, radiant and lovely, of which sheasked no more than that it should exist, exist in soft radiance within herself, a mystic sun, a glowing mystery, invisible to all but her, it pained her that those two, Henri and Marianne, could find nothing for themselves and for each other!... She listened anxiously to the sounds upstairs. She heard his footsteps tramping overhead, heard him even throwing his clothes about, splashing the water noisily, almost breaking the jug and basin in his savage recklessness, his violent resentment against everything. It all reechoed in her; she kept on starting: there he was flinging his boots across the room; bang went the door of his wardrobe; and, when he had finished, she heard him go to his den. Everything became still; the warmth of the summer afternoon floated in through the open windows; a heat mist hung over the garden of the little villa; in the kitchen, the maid was droning out a sentimental song, in a dreary monotone....Constance’ uneasiness increased. Yes, she must, she must tell him something: she almost became frightened at the idea of telling him nothing, of concealing from him entirely that Van Vreeswijck had asked her to go to Marianne. And yet nothing compelled her to say anything to Henri; and it would perhaps not even, she thought, be fair to Van Vreeswijck. She did not know; her thoughts rambled on uneasily. But persistently, as though from out of the new, fresh youth that was hers, one ideaobtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing, not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back....All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri’s little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.“Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “I should like to speak to you for a moment....”He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:“What is it now?” he asked, roughly.She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort toclear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly ... so that he might know:“Oh,” she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene, “I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice....”Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously, that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she, who never asked his advice! And he echoed:“To ask my advice?”“Yes,” she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain constraint, “I wanted to tell you—what do you think?—Vreeswijck stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he wanted absolutely....”“Wanted what?”She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were flashing from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.“He would so much like ... he asked me....”She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes, now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But she could not keep silent either:“He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne....”She saw him give a shiver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she went on:“That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to Bertha ... and ask her....”“Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?” he repeated; and his eyes were almost black. “Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you’re not mixing yourself up in it, are you? You’re not going, surely?”“I went this morning,” she said; and her voice once more sounded discordant.He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself, he flew into a passion:“You went? You went this morning?” he raved; and even in his raving she saw the suffering. “Why need you mix yourself up in it? What business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck....”He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough word, cruel, hard and insulting:“Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting....”Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his pain, that the angrytempest died down at once and she merely said, very gently:“She has refused him.”He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed, his whole body relaxed; he gave a shiver and sat down, as though all his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:“She ... has refused him?”“Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!”“Yes, poor fellow!” he said, mechanically.“I wanted to tell you, because ...”“Because what?”“Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But you went out....”He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for a moment.But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one hideous constriction.They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her, made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced love-illusion of passion, the life-long mistake which they were mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness: all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again: the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having anything to givehim in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:“Henri....”He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle whichhad bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others—her own people, people like herself, the small people—felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt—in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement—that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen shewould like to give back now ... in so far as was possible to her!“Henri,” she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in those two or three seconds, “there is something more I want to say to you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm; and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last....”“What do you mean?” he asked.“I have been thinking a great deal lately,” she continued, turning her steady eyes towards him. “I have been thinking a very great deal, about our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made....”He became impatient:“What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?” he asked, with an irritable shake of his shoulders.“Come, Henri,” she said, gently, “let us talk for once, for once in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a mistake. And the fault....”“Is mine, I suppose?” he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working himself up for the scene which he foresaw.She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:“The fault is mine.”He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him: he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling alone with Marianne.But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:“The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that your life did not become ... what it might have been.”Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful humility that almost touched him.“But what are you driving at?” he said, nevertheless, in a voice that was still nervous and jerky. “You are very frank and honest in looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up for the wrong which I had done you.”“I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri.I should not have accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife.”“But what would you have done then?”“I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere....”“I should have had to give up the service just the same....”“But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young: you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps too late.”He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded anxiously:“Constance, I can’t talk in this way. I’m not used to it....”“Can’t you face things seriously for a moment?...”“No, I can’t. It upsets me. I don’t know: you mean to be nice, I believe, but please don’t let us talk like this. We’re not accustomed to it. And I ... I can’t do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets me.”“Come,” she said, in a motherly tone, “you are not so much upset as all that. You can have abicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment....”He sighed, sank into his chair, submitted to her stronger will. If only she had flown out at him, he would have stormed back at her; but she was saying such strange things, the sort of things that people never said, and she was so calm and frank about it, calmer and franker than people ever were.“You will listen seriously for a moment? Well, what I want to ask you is this: have you never thought that it would be better ... if we just quietly separated, Henri?”He said nothing, looked at her with his great wondering eyes.“It is certainly very late,” she said, “very late for me to propose it. But it is perhaps not too late.... Let us be honest, Henri: we have never been happy together. You might perhaps still be happy without me, released from me, free....”He continued to look at her, his eyes still full of amazement; and it seemed as though he was afraid to turn his gaze towards a life of such transcendent peace and quietness and sincerity. It seemed to him that she was urging him to take a road which grew fainter and fainter as it took its mystic, winding way towards clouds ... towards things that did not exist.“I?... Happy?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.But a more concrete thought now came into his mind:“And Addie?” he asked.“I am not forgetting him,” she said, gently. “He is the child of both of us, whom we both love. If we quietly ... quietly separate, if you become happy later, he will be able to understand that his parents, however passionately they both loved him, separated because it was better that they should. He need not suffer through it. He will not suffer through it. At least, I like to think that he will not. If we are only honest, Henri, he cannot suffer through it.”“And you ... what would you do?”She blushed, but did not lose her composure; he did not see her blush. She had not yet thought of herself for a moment: she was thinking, had been thinking, after that wave of remorse and after holding Marianne that morning in her arms, only of him and Marianne, of their happiness, his and Marianne’s, even though she did not mention the girl’s name again, once she had told him that Marianne had refused Van Vreeswijck. She was thinking only of the two of them.... What would she do? She did not know. Her love, it is true, rose radiantly before her: her love, her new life; but she was not thinking of outward change. Life, the real life, was an inward thing; outwardly she was the mother of her son and would remain so....“I?” she asked. “Nothing. I should simply stay as I am. Addie could be with us in turns.”“It would distress him, Constance....”“Perhaps, at first.... But he would soon understand.”“Constance, tell me, why are you speaking like this?”“In what way?”“What do you really mean, Constance? What do you mean by my happiness?”“Only what I say, Henri: that you may still be able to find your happiness.”“You are frank,” he said, forcing himself to adopt her tone, though it was difficult for him to speak like that. “You are frank. I will also try to be frank. My happiness? You speak of my happiness?... I am too old to find that now.”“No, you are not old. You are young.”“And you?”“I ... am old. But there is no question about me. I am thinking ... of you.”She looked at him and he suddenly understood her. He understood her, but he writhed under so much frankness and at seeing life so honestly:“No, no, Constance,” he mumbled.“Think it over,” she said, gently. “If you like ... I will agree. Only ... let us do it quietly, Henri, ... let us do it, if possible, with something of affection for each other.”Her eyes filled with tears. He was very much moved:“No, Constance, no,” he mumbled.“Henri, have the courage to be honest. Have the courage and do not be weak. Be a man. I am only a woman and I have the courage.”“Constance, people ...”“No, Henri, you must not hesitate because of people. If we cannot do it, it would be because of Addie. But I like to think that, if he understands, he will not suffer through it. Hemustnot suffer through it: that would be selfish of him; and he is not selfish.”“No, Constance, no!” he protested again.“Think it over, Henri,” she repeated. “Think it all out. I shall think of Addie also. You know how passionately devoted I am to him. But ...”“Constance, it is all too late.”“But think it over, Henri.”“Yes, yes, Constance, I shall ... I shall think it over.”“And, if we decide upon it ... let us do it ... let us decide to do it with something of affection for each other ...”“Yes, Constance ... yes, with affection ... You are nice ... you are kind ...”He looked at her, his chest heaving with emotion; a haze dimmed the boyish glance of his eyes. She had meant to go, quietly, to leave him alone. Shewent to the door, without another word, another look, wishing to leave him alone with his thoughts.“Constance!” he cried, hoarsely.She looked round. He was standing before her; and she saw him quivering, trembling with the emotion, the shock which the reality of life had sent shuddering through him. For a moment they stood in front of each other; and, because they saw into each other’s eyes, they told each other once more—silently, without words—that they understood each other! A great gratitude, an emotion that to him was almost superhuman shot through his small soul and flowed over her. And, impotently, he cried once more, like a man in a fever:“Constance!”He flung himself, distractedly, desperately, with a wild impulse, into her arms; bursting into sobs, he buried his head in her breast. She started violently; she felt his convulsive tremors against her heart. Then she threw her arm around him, stroked his hair. It was as though she were comforting her son.“I am mad, I am mad!” he muttered.He released himself, hurriedly pressed a quivering kiss on her forehead and tore down the stairs. And, when she went down to her drawing-room, she suddenly heard the front-door slam and saw him bicycling away like a madman, his back arched like a professional’s. He pedalled, pedalled furiously:she watched him lose himself ... in movement, speed and space ...“Poor boy!” she thought.Then she sank into a chair, while the room swam round her. She closed her eyes and her hands fell limply at her side. So she sat for half an hour, unconscious, alone ... as if the new life had been too keen, too intense, with its pure air, its honesty ... too rare and keen in its cold-blue ether ... and as if she were swooning away in it....

Chapter XXVI

When Constance returned home, she was even more troubled than she had been in the morning by what she called her dishonesty towards Van der Welcke. She lunched alone with Addie; Van der Welcke did not come in, was evidently trying to lose himself on his bicycle in the roads outside the Hague and lunching off a sandwich and a glass of beer at a country inn. He did not come home till very late, tired and dusty, and he was in an unbearable mood, as though his surfeit of movement and speed and space had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and not the beneficent anæsthesia which he had expected of it. Roughly, as though dispirited and disgusted, he put away his machine, without bestowing on it the care which he usually gave to it after a long ride, angry with the lifeless steel which had not consoled him, which had not shown itself a friend this time. It was three o’clock; and he went straight to his room to change his clothes.Constance, in her drawing-room, remained uneasy. In her heart there was a deep pity for Marianne; and for him too an almost motherly pity, which made her eyes fill with tears. Oh, when she had found so very much for herself, so much that was broad and lofty, radiant and lovely, of which sheasked no more than that it should exist, exist in soft radiance within herself, a mystic sun, a glowing mystery, invisible to all but her, it pained her that those two, Henri and Marianne, could find nothing for themselves and for each other!... She listened anxiously to the sounds upstairs. She heard his footsteps tramping overhead, heard him even throwing his clothes about, splashing the water noisily, almost breaking the jug and basin in his savage recklessness, his violent resentment against everything. It all reechoed in her; she kept on starting: there he was flinging his boots across the room; bang went the door of his wardrobe; and, when he had finished, she heard him go to his den. Everything became still; the warmth of the summer afternoon floated in through the open windows; a heat mist hung over the garden of the little villa; in the kitchen, the maid was droning out a sentimental song, in a dreary monotone....Constance’ uneasiness increased. Yes, she must, she must tell him something: she almost became frightened at the idea of telling him nothing, of concealing from him entirely that Van Vreeswijck had asked her to go to Marianne. And yet nothing compelled her to say anything to Henri; and it would perhaps not even, she thought, be fair to Van Vreeswijck. She did not know; her thoughts rambled on uneasily. But persistently, as though from out of the new, fresh youth that was hers, one ideaobtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing, not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back....All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri’s little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.“Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “I should like to speak to you for a moment....”He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:“What is it now?” he asked, roughly.She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort toclear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly ... so that he might know:“Oh,” she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene, “I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice....”Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously, that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she, who never asked his advice! And he echoed:“To ask my advice?”“Yes,” she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain constraint, “I wanted to tell you—what do you think?—Vreeswijck stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he wanted absolutely....”“Wanted what?”She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were flashing from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.“He would so much like ... he asked me....”She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes, now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But she could not keep silent either:“He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne....”She saw him give a shiver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she went on:“That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to Bertha ... and ask her....”“Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?” he repeated; and his eyes were almost black. “Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you’re not mixing yourself up in it, are you? You’re not going, surely?”“I went this morning,” she said; and her voice once more sounded discordant.He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself, he flew into a passion:“You went? You went this morning?” he raved; and even in his raving she saw the suffering. “Why need you mix yourself up in it? What business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck....”He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough word, cruel, hard and insulting:“Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting....”Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his pain, that the angrytempest died down at once and she merely said, very gently:“She has refused him.”He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed, his whole body relaxed; he gave a shiver and sat down, as though all his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:“She ... has refused him?”“Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!”“Yes, poor fellow!” he said, mechanically.“I wanted to tell you, because ...”“Because what?”“Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But you went out....”He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for a moment.But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one hideous constriction.They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her, made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced love-illusion of passion, the life-long mistake which they were mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness: all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again: the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having anything to givehim in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:“Henri....”He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle whichhad bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others—her own people, people like herself, the small people—felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt—in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement—that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen shewould like to give back now ... in so far as was possible to her!“Henri,” she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in those two or three seconds, “there is something more I want to say to you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm; and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last....”“What do you mean?” he asked.“I have been thinking a great deal lately,” she continued, turning her steady eyes towards him. “I have been thinking a very great deal, about our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made....”He became impatient:“What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?” he asked, with an irritable shake of his shoulders.“Come, Henri,” she said, gently, “let us talk for once, for once in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a mistake. And the fault....”“Is mine, I suppose?” he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working himself up for the scene which he foresaw.She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:“The fault is mine.”He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him: he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling alone with Marianne.But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:“The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that your life did not become ... what it might have been.”Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful humility that almost touched him.“But what are you driving at?” he said, nevertheless, in a voice that was still nervous and jerky. “You are very frank and honest in looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up for the wrong which I had done you.”“I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri.I should not have accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife.”“But what would you have done then?”“I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere....”“I should have had to give up the service just the same....”“But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young: you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps too late.”He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded anxiously:“Constance, I can’t talk in this way. I’m not used to it....”“Can’t you face things seriously for a moment?...”“No, I can’t. It upsets me. I don’t know: you mean to be nice, I believe, but please don’t let us talk like this. We’re not accustomed to it. And I ... I can’t do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets me.”“Come,” she said, in a motherly tone, “you are not so much upset as all that. You can have abicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment....”He sighed, sank into his chair, submitted to her stronger will. If only she had flown out at him, he would have stormed back at her; but she was saying such strange things, the sort of things that people never said, and she was so calm and frank about it, calmer and franker than people ever were.“You will listen seriously for a moment? Well, what I want to ask you is this: have you never thought that it would be better ... if we just quietly separated, Henri?”He said nothing, looked at her with his great wondering eyes.“It is certainly very late,” she said, “very late for me to propose it. But it is perhaps not too late.... Let us be honest, Henri: we have never been happy together. You might perhaps still be happy without me, released from me, free....”He continued to look at her, his eyes still full of amazement; and it seemed as though he was afraid to turn his gaze towards a life of such transcendent peace and quietness and sincerity. It seemed to him that she was urging him to take a road which grew fainter and fainter as it took its mystic, winding way towards clouds ... towards things that did not exist.“I?... Happy?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.But a more concrete thought now came into his mind:“And Addie?” he asked.“I am not forgetting him,” she said, gently. “He is the child of both of us, whom we both love. If we quietly ... quietly separate, if you become happy later, he will be able to understand that his parents, however passionately they both loved him, separated because it was better that they should. He need not suffer through it. He will not suffer through it. At least, I like to think that he will not. If we are only honest, Henri, he cannot suffer through it.”“And you ... what would you do?”She blushed, but did not lose her composure; he did not see her blush. She had not yet thought of herself for a moment: she was thinking, had been thinking, after that wave of remorse and after holding Marianne that morning in her arms, only of him and Marianne, of their happiness, his and Marianne’s, even though she did not mention the girl’s name again, once she had told him that Marianne had refused Van Vreeswijck. She was thinking only of the two of them.... What would she do? She did not know. Her love, it is true, rose radiantly before her: her love, her new life; but she was not thinking of outward change. Life, the real life, was an inward thing; outwardly she was the mother of her son and would remain so....“I?” she asked. “Nothing. I should simply stay as I am. Addie could be with us in turns.”“It would distress him, Constance....”“Perhaps, at first.... But he would soon understand.”“Constance, tell me, why are you speaking like this?”“In what way?”“What do you really mean, Constance? What do you mean by my happiness?”“Only what I say, Henri: that you may still be able to find your happiness.”“You are frank,” he said, forcing himself to adopt her tone, though it was difficult for him to speak like that. “You are frank. I will also try to be frank. My happiness? You speak of my happiness?... I am too old to find that now.”“No, you are not old. You are young.”“And you?”“I ... am old. But there is no question about me. I am thinking ... of you.”She looked at him and he suddenly understood her. He understood her, but he writhed under so much frankness and at seeing life so honestly:“No, no, Constance,” he mumbled.“Think it over,” she said, gently. “If you like ... I will agree. Only ... let us do it quietly, Henri, ... let us do it, if possible, with something of affection for each other.”Her eyes filled with tears. He was very much moved:“No, Constance, no,” he mumbled.“Henri, have the courage to be honest. Have the courage and do not be weak. Be a man. I am only a woman and I have the courage.”“Constance, people ...”“No, Henri, you must not hesitate because of people. If we cannot do it, it would be because of Addie. But I like to think that, if he understands, he will not suffer through it. Hemustnot suffer through it: that would be selfish of him; and he is not selfish.”“No, Constance, no!” he protested again.“Think it over, Henri,” she repeated. “Think it all out. I shall think of Addie also. You know how passionately devoted I am to him. But ...”“Constance, it is all too late.”“But think it over, Henri.”“Yes, yes, Constance, I shall ... I shall think it over.”“And, if we decide upon it ... let us do it ... let us decide to do it with something of affection for each other ...”“Yes, Constance ... yes, with affection ... You are nice ... you are kind ...”He looked at her, his chest heaving with emotion; a haze dimmed the boyish glance of his eyes. She had meant to go, quietly, to leave him alone. Shewent to the door, without another word, another look, wishing to leave him alone with his thoughts.“Constance!” he cried, hoarsely.She looked round. He was standing before her; and she saw him quivering, trembling with the emotion, the shock which the reality of life had sent shuddering through him. For a moment they stood in front of each other; and, because they saw into each other’s eyes, they told each other once more—silently, without words—that they understood each other! A great gratitude, an emotion that to him was almost superhuman shot through his small soul and flowed over her. And, impotently, he cried once more, like a man in a fever:“Constance!”He flung himself, distractedly, desperately, with a wild impulse, into her arms; bursting into sobs, he buried his head in her breast. She started violently; she felt his convulsive tremors against her heart. Then she threw her arm around him, stroked his hair. It was as though she were comforting her son.“I am mad, I am mad!” he muttered.He released himself, hurriedly pressed a quivering kiss on her forehead and tore down the stairs. And, when she went down to her drawing-room, she suddenly heard the front-door slam and saw him bicycling away like a madman, his back arched like a professional’s. He pedalled, pedalled furiously:she watched him lose himself ... in movement, speed and space ...“Poor boy!” she thought.Then she sank into a chair, while the room swam round her. She closed her eyes and her hands fell limply at her side. So she sat for half an hour, unconscious, alone ... as if the new life had been too keen, too intense, with its pure air, its honesty ... too rare and keen in its cold-blue ether ... and as if she were swooning away in it....

When Constance returned home, she was even more troubled than she had been in the morning by what she called her dishonesty towards Van der Welcke. She lunched alone with Addie; Van der Welcke did not come in, was evidently trying to lose himself on his bicycle in the roads outside the Hague and lunching off a sandwich and a glass of beer at a country inn. He did not come home till very late, tired and dusty, and he was in an unbearable mood, as though his surfeit of movement and speed and space had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and not the beneficent anæsthesia which he had expected of it. Roughly, as though dispirited and disgusted, he put away his machine, without bestowing on it the care which he usually gave to it after a long ride, angry with the lifeless steel which had not consoled him, which had not shown itself a friend this time. It was three o’clock; and he went straight to his room to change his clothes.

Constance, in her drawing-room, remained uneasy. In her heart there was a deep pity for Marianne; and for him too an almost motherly pity, which made her eyes fill with tears. Oh, when she had found so very much for herself, so much that was broad and lofty, radiant and lovely, of which sheasked no more than that it should exist, exist in soft radiance within herself, a mystic sun, a glowing mystery, invisible to all but her, it pained her that those two, Henri and Marianne, could find nothing for themselves and for each other!... She listened anxiously to the sounds upstairs. She heard his footsteps tramping overhead, heard him even throwing his clothes about, splashing the water noisily, almost breaking the jug and basin in his savage recklessness, his violent resentment against everything. It all reechoed in her; she kept on starting: there he was flinging his boots across the room; bang went the door of his wardrobe; and, when he had finished, she heard him go to his den. Everything became still; the warmth of the summer afternoon floated in through the open windows; a heat mist hung over the garden of the little villa; in the kitchen, the maid was droning out a sentimental song, in a dreary monotone....

Constance’ uneasiness increased. Yes, she must, she must tell him something: she almost became frightened at the idea of telling him nothing, of concealing from him entirely that Van Vreeswijck had asked her to go to Marianne. And yet nothing compelled her to say anything to Henri; and it would perhaps not even, she thought, be fair to Van Vreeswijck. She did not know; her thoughts rambled on uneasily. But persistently, as though from out of the new, fresh youth that was hers, one ideaobtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing, not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back....

All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri’s little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “I should like to speak to you for a moment....”

He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:

“What is it now?” he asked, roughly.

She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort toclear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly ... so that he might know:

“Oh,” she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene, “I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice....”

Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously, that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she, who never asked his advice! And he echoed:

“To ask my advice?”

“Yes,” she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain constraint, “I wanted to tell you—what do you think?—Vreeswijck stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he wanted absolutely....”

“Wanted what?”

She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were flashing from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.

“He would so much like ... he asked me....”

She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes, now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But she could not keep silent either:

“He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne....”

She saw him give a shiver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she went on:

“That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to Bertha ... and ask her....”

“Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?” he repeated; and his eyes were almost black. “Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you’re not mixing yourself up in it, are you? You’re not going, surely?”

“I went this morning,” she said; and her voice once more sounded discordant.

He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself, he flew into a passion:

“You went? You went this morning?” he raved; and even in his raving she saw the suffering. “Why need you mix yourself up in it? What business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck....”

He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough word, cruel, hard and insulting:

“Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting....”

Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his pain, that the angrytempest died down at once and she merely said, very gently:

“She has refused him.”

He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed, his whole body relaxed; he gave a shiver and sat down, as though all his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:

“She ... has refused him?”

“Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!”

“Yes, poor fellow!” he said, mechanically.

“I wanted to tell you, because ...”

“Because what?”

“Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But you went out....”

He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for a moment.But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one hideous constriction.

They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her, made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced love-illusion of passion, the life-long mistake which they were mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness: all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again: the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having anything to givehim in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!

She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:

“Henri....”

He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle whichhad bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others—her own people, people like herself, the small people—felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt—in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement—that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen shewould like to give back now ... in so far as was possible to her!

“Henri,” she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in those two or three seconds, “there is something more I want to say to you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm; and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last....”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I have been thinking a great deal lately,” she continued, turning her steady eyes towards him. “I have been thinking a very great deal, about our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made....”

He became impatient:

“What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?” he asked, with an irritable shake of his shoulders.

“Come, Henri,” she said, gently, “let us talk for once, for once in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a mistake. And the fault....”

“Is mine, I suppose?” he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working himself up for the scene which he foresaw.

She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:

“The fault is mine.”

He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him: he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling alone with Marianne.

But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:

“The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that your life did not become ... what it might have been.”

Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful humility that almost touched him.

“But what are you driving at?” he said, nevertheless, in a voice that was still nervous and jerky. “You are very frank and honest in looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up for the wrong which I had done you.”

“I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri.I should not have accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife.”

“But what would you have done then?”

“I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere....”

“I should have had to give up the service just the same....”

“But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young: you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps too late.”

He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded anxiously:

“Constance, I can’t talk in this way. I’m not used to it....”

“Can’t you face things seriously for a moment?...”

“No, I can’t. It upsets me. I don’t know: you mean to be nice, I believe, but please don’t let us talk like this. We’re not accustomed to it. And I ... I can’t do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets me.”

“Come,” she said, in a motherly tone, “you are not so much upset as all that. You can have abicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment....”

He sighed, sank into his chair, submitted to her stronger will. If only she had flown out at him, he would have stormed back at her; but she was saying such strange things, the sort of things that people never said, and she was so calm and frank about it, calmer and franker than people ever were.

“You will listen seriously for a moment? Well, what I want to ask you is this: have you never thought that it would be better ... if we just quietly separated, Henri?”

He said nothing, looked at her with his great wondering eyes.

“It is certainly very late,” she said, “very late for me to propose it. But it is perhaps not too late.... Let us be honest, Henri: we have never been happy together. You might perhaps still be happy without me, released from me, free....”

He continued to look at her, his eyes still full of amazement; and it seemed as though he was afraid to turn his gaze towards a life of such transcendent peace and quietness and sincerity. It seemed to him that she was urging him to take a road which grew fainter and fainter as it took its mystic, winding way towards clouds ... towards things that did not exist.

“I?... Happy?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.

But a more concrete thought now came into his mind:

“And Addie?” he asked.

“I am not forgetting him,” she said, gently. “He is the child of both of us, whom we both love. If we quietly ... quietly separate, if you become happy later, he will be able to understand that his parents, however passionately they both loved him, separated because it was better that they should. He need not suffer through it. He will not suffer through it. At least, I like to think that he will not. If we are only honest, Henri, he cannot suffer through it.”

“And you ... what would you do?”

She blushed, but did not lose her composure; he did not see her blush. She had not yet thought of herself for a moment: she was thinking, had been thinking, after that wave of remorse and after holding Marianne that morning in her arms, only of him and Marianne, of their happiness, his and Marianne’s, even though she did not mention the girl’s name again, once she had told him that Marianne had refused Van Vreeswijck. She was thinking only of the two of them.... What would she do? She did not know. Her love, it is true, rose radiantly before her: her love, her new life; but she was not thinking of outward change. Life, the real life, was an inward thing; outwardly she was the mother of her son and would remain so....

“I?” she asked. “Nothing. I should simply stay as I am. Addie could be with us in turns.”

“It would distress him, Constance....”

“Perhaps, at first.... But he would soon understand.”

“Constance, tell me, why are you speaking like this?”

“In what way?”

“What do you really mean, Constance? What do you mean by my happiness?”

“Only what I say, Henri: that you may still be able to find your happiness.”

“You are frank,” he said, forcing himself to adopt her tone, though it was difficult for him to speak like that. “You are frank. I will also try to be frank. My happiness? You speak of my happiness?... I am too old to find that now.”

“No, you are not old. You are young.”

“And you?”

“I ... am old. But there is no question about me. I am thinking ... of you.”

She looked at him and he suddenly understood her. He understood her, but he writhed under so much frankness and at seeing life so honestly:

“No, no, Constance,” he mumbled.

“Think it over,” she said, gently. “If you like ... I will agree. Only ... let us do it quietly, Henri, ... let us do it, if possible, with something of affection for each other.”

Her eyes filled with tears. He was very much moved:

“No, Constance, no,” he mumbled.

“Henri, have the courage to be honest. Have the courage and do not be weak. Be a man. I am only a woman and I have the courage.”

“Constance, people ...”

“No, Henri, you must not hesitate because of people. If we cannot do it, it would be because of Addie. But I like to think that, if he understands, he will not suffer through it. Hemustnot suffer through it: that would be selfish of him; and he is not selfish.”

“No, Constance, no!” he protested again.

“Think it over, Henri,” she repeated. “Think it all out. I shall think of Addie also. You know how passionately devoted I am to him. But ...”

“Constance, it is all too late.”

“But think it over, Henri.”

“Yes, yes, Constance, I shall ... I shall think it over.”

“And, if we decide upon it ... let us do it ... let us decide to do it with something of affection for each other ...”

“Yes, Constance ... yes, with affection ... You are nice ... you are kind ...”

He looked at her, his chest heaving with emotion; a haze dimmed the boyish glance of his eyes. She had meant to go, quietly, to leave him alone. Shewent to the door, without another word, another look, wishing to leave him alone with his thoughts.

“Constance!” he cried, hoarsely.

She looked round. He was standing before her; and she saw him quivering, trembling with the emotion, the shock which the reality of life had sent shuddering through him. For a moment they stood in front of each other; and, because they saw into each other’s eyes, they told each other once more—silently, without words—that they understood each other! A great gratitude, an emotion that to him was almost superhuman shot through his small soul and flowed over her. And, impotently, he cried once more, like a man in a fever:

“Constance!”

He flung himself, distractedly, desperately, with a wild impulse, into her arms; bursting into sobs, he buried his head in her breast. She started violently; she felt his convulsive tremors against her heart. Then she threw her arm around him, stroked his hair. It was as though she were comforting her son.

“I am mad, I am mad!” he muttered.

He released himself, hurriedly pressed a quivering kiss on her forehead and tore down the stairs. And, when she went down to her drawing-room, she suddenly heard the front-door slam and saw him bicycling away like a madman, his back arched like a professional’s. He pedalled, pedalled furiously:she watched him lose himself ... in movement, speed and space ...

“Poor boy!” she thought.

Then she sank into a chair, while the room swam round her. She closed her eyes and her hands fell limply at her side. So she sat for half an hour, unconscious, alone ... as if the new life had been too keen, too intense, with its pure air, its honesty ... too rare and keen in its cold-blue ether ... and as if she were swooning away in it....

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