It was spring; and Marietje van Saetzema was to go to the Hague for the day, to see her father and mother. Constance went with her.

"How well Marietje was looking!" cried Adolphine, with delight.

Marietje certainly looked well. She would always remain a little pallid, frail and thin, with narrow shoulders; but her cheeks had filled out, her eyes showed a dewy calmness and her lips, pale though they were, blossomed into a kindly smile. She was, as usual, a little subdued, but she joined in the conversation and her attitude was more natural, less painful and forced.

"But you must leave her with us for the summer as well," said Constance, "for the poor girl hasn't had much out of the country air during the winter. It is beginning to look lovely now where we are. She'll spend a summer with us first, Adolphine, won't she, before you take her back?"

"Very well," said Adolphine, gratefully.

But presently, when she was alone with her sister, she found an opportunity to say:

"At least ... if there are no objections."

"What objection could there be?"

"Because of Addie."

"What do you mean?"

"People are so spiteful sometimes, you know. They say...."

"What do they say?"

"They say that Addie is in love with Marietje and that Marietje does her best to attract him."

"I should let them talk, Phine."

"What do you believe, Constance?"

"I don't believe a word of it. Addie is in love with his wife."

"That's just it. People say...."

"What do they say now?"

"That things are not going so very well between Mathilde and Addie."

"Every young couple has a difficult time now and again. A little difference of opinion ... I assure you they are happy together."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

"It was Mathilde's wish to come and live here?"

"It was better that she should be on her own, in her own house."

"Oh, she didn't have a scene with you then? That's what people say."

"I never had a single word with Mathilde."

"I see her once in a way. She does not talk nicely of you. She says that she was sacrificed to Gerrit's children, that she did not count at home. When she talks like that, I defend you, for I know how nice you and Van der Welcke are to everybody."

"She may have had a bitter moment that made her speak like that."

"She goes out a lot," said Adolphine.

"When? Whom does she go to?"

"In the evening. Friends. She is hardly ever at home of an evening. She oughtn't to do that ... without Addie, you know. It's so undomesticated."

"I know she goes out now and then of an evening to have tea ... with friends."

"Yes, exactly.... She's always out.... But how well Marietje is looking, Constance! She does Addie great credit. He's making a great reputation ... with his hypnotism. Everyone wants to be hypnotized by him. I'm always hearing him praised."

"I'm so glad, Adolphine."

She went away, arranging to fetch Marietje in the afternoon and take her back to Driebergen. She had an open fly waiting: it was beautiful, mild weather; and the spring was weaving verdure in between the trees. But a heavy load lay on Constance' breast and she could have cried ... because of her boy, because of Addie. She was going to ride to him now, at the other end of the town, the Emmastraat. She meant to lunch there and, when she had seen the grandchildren, to come back to Adolphine's. It was eleven o'clock. And she felt so much weighed down with sorrow for Addie, who came home to them looking more and more gloomy every week, that she could not, could not go to him yet ... after all that Adolphine had said.... Oh, how she always loved saying things that jarred upon your nerves, things that hurt, things that grated against your soul! Did she do it purposely? Was she insincere? Or was it because she couldn't help it, because she was tactless ... or, very likely, took an unconscious pleasure in hurting other people?... Oh, perhaps she did not know how much pain she gave!... But to go straight to Addie now, to Mathilde, was impossible....

"Cabman, drive a little way through the Woods first."

The driver turned down the Javastraat, went along the Scheveningen Road and let his horse roam at will in the rides of the Woods.... Oh, the Hague was charming; she loved the Woods! Even as Addie loved Driebergen, with an innate inherited love for the house and household and the fact of living there—he was indeed his grand-parents' grand-child—so she loved the Hague greatly. She loved those green villa-lined roads, she loved the briny fragrance of the sea.... She was now riding along the Ornamental Water, now, suddenly, along the spot where she remembered meeting Brauws years ago—he sitting on that bench yonder—when, after she had turned round with a start, he caught her up; and her confession, that she had suggested a divorce to Henri.... Oh, those days, those days of life and suffering and illusion, so far, so far away in the distant past!... And now, now the man drove with his jog-trot, the jog-trot of a victoria hired by the hour, along the Kerkhoflaan; now she was riding past the old house.... Oh, that old house! It was as though the past, the illusion, the suffering and the life, the later, later life, were still hanging around it like a low-drifting cloud! It was the trees of yore and the skies of yore and the green spring life of yore. The house, the house: there was the window at which she had so often sat musing, gazing at the great skies overhead, while her soul travelled along a path of light. Up above were Addie's little turret-room and her own bedroom: oh, that night of illusion at the open window, with the noiseless flashes of hope over the sea, the distant sea yonder!... She felt almost inclined to stop, to alight, to ask leave to go over the house; but something in the curtains, in the outline of a woman sketching at the window of her former boudoir prevented her; and she rode on. Oh, how she loved her Hague; and yet ... yet she had suffered there, with what antipathy she had been surrounded!... Did that antipathy of small souls for small souls go on for ever? Must her poor boy now suffer through it, even though he made his name as a doctor?... Oh, what a heavy depression she felt upon her heart, as if her fur cloak, were much too warm for the balmy weather with its breath of spring!... Now they were going down the Bankastraat, past poor Gerrit's old house; and suddenly that terrible night of snow stood white-hideous before her mind, stained dark with her brother's blood.... Here was Dorine's boarding-house; and Constance got out and rang, but Dorine was not in.... The driver jogged on wearily. She recognized acquaintances here and there, grown older now that her memories were harking back to past years; and the cabman, doubtless to spin out the drive, instead of following the Kanaal, turned up the Alexanderstraat. Oh, the house, the old family house, so full of recollections, so full of the past! And ... she saw that it was empty, that it was to let. With a quick glance at the uncurtained windows above, she even recognized the plasterwork of the ceilings; and it was as though the past still brooded there, still stared out at her, through the white, streaked windows.... Wearily the horse now jogged along the Bezuidenhout; and she saw poor Bertha's house, with its tightly-drawn veil of chill panes stiff and repelling a swift penetrating glance.... Yes, the Hague was like a grave to her; and yet even as a grave the Hague was dear to her. A grave? And Addie lived down there, at the end of the street!... Would she still care to live in the Hague? She did not know, she did not know: perhaps she was becoming used to Driebergen, becoming used to the big, sombre house there, because there was so much love around her, even though she continued to feel a stranger there.... And a stranger: that was how her boy felt here!

The carriage now pulled up outside her boy's house. Strange, the front-door was open: perhaps the maid was out on an errand and had left the door open for a minute to save herself trouble. Constance, telling the driver to come back at half-past two, went inside. Addie could hardly be home yet from visiting his patients. She knocked at the door of the drawing-room and received no answer. Mathilde was no doubt busy with the children or with her house-keeping. Constance opened the door and walked in, to look for her.

She gave a start. Through the drawing-room and the dining-room she saw Mathilde sitting in the conservatory, with Johan Erzeele beside her. He sat bending towards her; and he was holding her hand in his two. Mathilde's eyes were staring into the distance; and a feeble hesitation seemed to take away something of the usual strength of her fine, healthy, rather full lines. Constance saw it for one moment, as a strange vision in that bright, unsoftened conservatory-light, which was made the harder with many-coloured muslin curtains and coarsely vivid with the gold and motley of ugly Japanese fans. It gave Constance a fright; and in that inexorable light the fright and the vision were both inexorable.

It did not last longer than a second. Her shadow in the drawing-room made Mathilde and Johan start up; and they rose to their feet:

"Mamma!"

"Mrs. van der Welcke!"

It sounded like a greeting; but their voices were unsteady, because they understood that Constance had seen. Constance' voice trembled, but she merely said:

"Good-morning, dear. How do you do, Mr. Erzeele?" She kissed Mathilde, shook hands with Erzeele. "I came over with Marietje; I left her with her father and mother and came to look you up ... intending to lunch with you ... if it suits you."

She strove to make her words and her voice sound quite unaffected and she succeeded; and, because she succeeded, she suddenly felt that what she had seen was nothing: a moment of familiar intimacy. Were they not old friends? Had Mathilde not, as a girl, when he was still a cadet, danced with him often at their dancing-club? There was nothing, there was nothing; she was reassured by the tranquillity of her own voice.

"So you will stay to lunch," said Mathilde.

"If it suits you."

"Of course it does.... Addie is not in yet."

"Are the children upstairs?"

"Yes, I'll send for them."

Erzeele said good-bye, said that he must go, reminded Mathilde easily of her appointment to meet him the next day at the tennis-club. Constance glanced at him quickly: in his uniform, he was young, broad and short; his complexion fair but bronzed with the sun; above his powerful shoulders and thick neck his face stood fresh and strong, smart military, with a pair of glad, childlike grey eyes; a long fair moustache shaded his lips, which were laughing glad and warmly sensual; and, when he laughed, his small sharp ivory teeth flashed.... His thick fair hair curled slightly at the tips....? It was very strange, but it struck her suddenly that Erzeele's way of looking at Mathilde resembled that of her own husband, Van der Welcke, when ... when he was young, when she met him in Rome. Something in the fresh vigour of his glance and of his rather sensual laugh, something about his figure, about his teeth reminded her of Henri as a young man.

"You've known him a long time, haven't you?" asked Constance, when he was gone.

"Oh dear, yes!" said Mathilde, vaguely.

The nurse brought down Jetje and Constant for Grandmamma to see: after that, the children were to go out for a little longer.

"They look well," said Constance, huskily.

She felt a heavy pressure of inexplicable melancholy on her heart, a pressure so heavy that she could have cried, so heavy that she felt her eyes grow moist in spite of herself.

"Yes," said Mathilde, "they're very healthy. It's quite a system that Addie and I are practising with that special diet and the regular time each day in the open air. The other day it was blowing a gale ... and Addie absolutely insisted that they should go out all the same. And I must say I agree with him."

Suddenly, while Jetje was sitting on her lap and Constant tugging at her skirts, Constance took Mathilde's hand:

"Then things are all right between you?" she whispered, almost imploringly.

"How do you mean?"

"You are happy now, Mathilde ... here at the Hague?"

"Certainly, Mamma.... You yourself understood, didn't you, that I longed for a house of my own."

"Yes, dear, I understood."

"Only...."

"What?"

"I am sorry to have robbed you of Addie."

"But, my dear, a son does not belong to his parents."

"Still, I reproach myself.... But I could not stay with you any longer. You understood that it was not because ... because you were not kind to me. You were very kind ... you tried to be ... though I do not believe that Papa likes me, that Emilie, Aunt Adeline or any of the others like me.... I bear them no malice: I don't like them either."

Constance was silent.

"I am so different from the boy and girl cousins ... and Papa was always jealous."

"My dear!"

"And you too; but you fought against it."

"Mathilde, I always wished you to feel at home with us; I always hoped that some part of you would blend with us."

"Exactly; and that was impossible: I was too different from all of you; and at Driebergen ... in the end.... I should have become as full of nerves ... as Mary."

There was a tint of hatred in her voice.

"No, dear," said Constance, harking back, "you were not happy with us. But because I hope that you are happy now...."

She had risen nervously; the nurse had entered and was taking the children with her: they were to have one more turn in the street before lunch.

"Tell me, Mathilde, are you really happy? Do you really and truly love Addie again?"

"I have always loved him. What do you mean?"

"Then it's all right, then it's all right, dear."

"Why are you so sad? There are tears in your eyes."

"The Hague always makes me sad. The cabman took me for a little drive and I passed all the houses of the old days ... when we all used to live here."

"Did you feel a longing to come back to the Hague?"

"No, no ... I don't want to come back again."

"Will you always remain at Driebergen?"

"Yes, I think so."

"You have found happiness there, I did not. I remained a stranger."

"Tilly ... one day, perhaps ... you will live there as we do now ... when we are no longer there...."

"No, never."

"Why not?"

"I dislike the house and everything in it ... down to the very doorposts. And I can't get used to an eerie house ... as you all do."

"But Addie...."

"Exactly: he will never forget the house. What can it be to him? He was not born there!"

"He feels at home there."

"Just so. And I do not.... Oh, I ought never to have married him!"

"Tilly, Tilly, what are you saying?"

"I ought never, never to have married him!"

"And you love him, you love him!"

"I have loved him, oh, very dearly. But he is far above me! I do not reach his level! He sacrifices himself for me. And it breaks my heart to accept his sacrifice. It oppresses me! Oh, Mamma, find something, find something for us! Let him go back to you all ... and let me stay here with the children.... I shall live simply ... in a small upper part ... and practise economy. It is all my fault, not his. He is good and kind and magnanimous ... but all that oppresses me. I thought at first that we were—how shall I put it?—akin to each other, kindred natures. When we got married, I used not to think about such things ... but I thought in myself, with an unconscious certainty, that we were akin. He was so nice, so straight-forward and so manly; and that rather elderly something appealed to me: I used to look up to it, without being oppressed by it.... Gradually, gradually I began to feel that he was far above me. Things I like leave him indifferent: little luxuries, fashion, gaiety, society. That hypnotism of his: at first, I used to think, 'This is something new, a new method;' now, I don't know: I am becoming afraid of it! I am becoming afraid of him! There is something in him that frightens me.... Oh, I know, it is only because he is so good and so big and because I feel very small and ordinary, because I don't understand those fine, lofty ideals ... about doing good and about poor people and about self-sacrifice!... To him it all comes natural. He is sacrificing himself now for me: he does not care for the Hague or for his practice here, whereas I could never live at Driebergen again.... And, even if I could feel more or less at home among you all ... even then, even then Addie would oppress me!... Do you understand? Oh, you are crying! Of course you are angry with me: you see your son above everything. That is easily understood; and I ... I still have enough love left for Addie to understand it, to understand it all.... But, you see, the love I still have for him ... is an anxious love, it's a sort of self-reproach that I am as I am and not different, a sort of remorse caused by all kinds of things I don't understand and can't express, things that make me cry when I am by myself and oppress me ... oppress me, until I sometimes feel as if I were suffocating!"

"Hush, dear: here he is!"

They both ceased and listened. They heard Addie's voice: coming home, he had met the children outside the house; Constance and Mathilde heard his deep voice sound kindly, playfully, in the hall. He now opened the door, with Jetje on one arm and little Constant toddling by his side with his hand in his father's.

"Mamma!" he exclaimed, in surprise. "I had no idea that you were here!"

"No, my boy, I came up unexpectedly. I brought Marietje with me and left her with her father and mother."

"You'll stay to lunch, of course?"

"I should like to."

"Why, what's the matter with you, Mamma?"

"The matter?"

"And with you, Mathilde?"

"With me?... Nothing."

He saw that they had been talking together. He said nothing more, however, but played with the children for a while and then released himself and gave them over to the nurse, who had come in.

"The youngsters are looking first-rate, aren't they?"

"We shall have lunch in a minute, Mamma," said Mathilde, tonelessly.

Addie sat down beside his mother, took her hand, smiled. Mathilde left the room with her keys.

"Don't fret, Mamma," he said.

"My boy...."

"You're fretting. You look so sad."

"My dear, my dear ... I...."

"What?"

She gave a sob and laid her hand on his shoulder. She was so frightened, so frightened, that it was as though her great dread stifled her and prevented her from breathing. She trembled in his embrace.

"You won't fret, you won't fret, will you, dear?"

"No."

The maid came to lay the table in the dining-room. Constance controlled herself.

"Mamma," he said, jestingly, now that Mathilde also returned, "you're losing all your vanity! That's a nice old blouse to come and see your son in! Look, it's wearing out at the elbows. Do you know you haven't looked at all smart lately?"

"Oh, my dear boy. This blouse is quite good still!"

"Well, I think it's seen its best days. What do you say, Tilly?"

"Why should I get myself up, an old woman like me?" said Constance.

"You'll never be old, Mummie, and a well-turned-out woman must always remain well-turned-out.... Do you remember the old days?"

"Yes, when...."

"You brought home that fine photograph from Nice?"

She smiled through her tears:

"My boy, that is so long ago!... You thought me a bundle of vanity then."

"The photograph never leaves my writing-table.... Mamma, you mustn't let yourself go like that."

"Very well, I don't wear this blouse any more. ... But it costs so much to dress nicely ... and we have so many expenses."

"You were not rich in the old days," said Mathilde, piqued at something that she did not understand.

"And yet Mamma wore dresses that cost six hundred francs," said Addie, chaffingly.

"Yes; and now that you are well off...."

"Now I never dream of doing such a thing," said Constance, gently.

The luncheon was quiet, a little melancholy, a little constrained. Afterwards, things went a little more merrily because Jetje and Constant came downstairs again with their nurse, suddenly, in a very youthful vision of golden hair seen through the open door. Their little voices chirped like those of young birds; and Constance could not refrain from saying how much they all missed them at Driebergen. For there also they were always coming down the stairs, looking so young and so golden, like a vision of the future, to go walking out of doors. Even in the winter they brought a hint of sunshine and of spring, something refreshing of youth and beginning, a promise of future in the old house which was so gloomily full of things of the past, things that hovered about the rooms, gleamed out of the mirrors, trailed, like strange draughts, along the lightly creaking stairs....

Mathilde did not say much; she was silent and sat with her lips closed and her whole face—her eyes half-shut—closed, after that sudden irresistible betrayal of her feelings to her mother-in-law to whom nevertheless she was attracted by no sort of sympathy.

A little while later, Constance' carriage came to fetch her and Addie offered to go to the Van Saetzema's with her and see how Marietje was.

"And what are you doing, Mathilde?" asked Constance, gently.

"I don't know.... I expect I shall go out.... Or I may stay at home...."

Addie went upstairs to get ready; and Constance suddenly took Mathilde in her arms.

"My dear...."

"Mamma...."

"You did well to speak out to me just now.... However sad it made me feel, you did right."

"Oh, why did I do it? I should have done better to hold my tongue."

"No, no. Speak, oh, do speak to Addie too!"

"I have spoken to him so often!"

"Not lately?"

Mathilde shrugged her shoulders:

"No, not so often lately. What's the use? It's not his fault ... it's six of one and half a dozen of the other ... and it can't be helped."

"Very likely. Only...."

"Only what, Mamma?"

"Be careful, Mathilde, I implore you! Oh, do be careful! Everything, everything can come right again.... You are sure to come together again later ... but be careful, be careful. Don't spoil your life."

They looked deep down into each other's eyes.

"Mathilde, I may speak openly to you, mayn't I? Just because it's I, dear, your mother ... who suffered so very much ... because she spoilt her life so ... spoilt it so ... when she was young ... until life became a torture.... I was a young woman, as you are, Mathilde, and ... and I wasn't happy ... any more than you are, my poor child, at the moment ... and...."

"I know, Mamma," Mathilde replied, shortly.

"Yes, you know ... you know all about it.... Of course you know, dear, though I have not mentioned it to you.... But just ... just because of all that, I may tell you, may I not, to be careful? Oh, do be careful!"

"You are afraid of things that don't exist."

"No, dear, there is nothing.... I know there's nothing ... only...."

"What?"

"You see ... when I arrived this morning...."

"Erzeele was with me."

"Yes."

"He's an old friend."

"I know."

"He came to make an appointment ... to play tennis to-morrow."

"Yes, I heard him."

"There was nothing else."

"He was holding your hand."

"He's an old friend whom I knew as a girl, almost as a child."

"Yes, dear, I know ... but...."

"What do you mean?"

"It is dangerous."

"What is?"

"To talk to him too much ... while you're in your present frame of mind. If you're feeling unhappy, dear, about one thing or another ... speak to Addie."

"I've spoken to him so often."

"Confide in him."

"I have."

"And not ... not in Johan Erzeele."

Mathilde's eyes blazed:

"Mamma ... you haven't the right!"

"Yes, dear, I have! I not only have the right to tell you this as Addie's mother, but above all I have the right because I understand you, because I am able to understand you, because I remember my own wretchedly unhappy years of despair, as a young married woman, unsatisfied, unhappy, desperate, though for other reasons, alas, than those between you and Addie!... Because I remember all this, Mathilde, because I can never forget, just because I remember, because I now remember how I used to talk ... to Papa while I was married to my poor old husband ... how I used to talk to Papa ... and try to find consolation in those talks ... and how we worked ourselves up with those talks until ... oh, Mathilde, oh, Mathilde, let me tell you all about it!... Let me tell you all about it, quite simply, even though you know, so that I may have the right to speak to you. I used to talk to Papa ... and we fell in love with each other ... we thought we loved each other...."

"And, if you thought so, why didn't you?"

"Because it wasn't true, dear, because it wasn't a burning fire of feeling, because it was an unreal feeling, arising from unreal words between a young woman and a young man until ... until all those talks drove them into each other's arms ... and the awful thing became irrevocable."

"Mamma!"

"I am telling you everything, dear...."

"I know everything, Mamma. But you say you used to have unreal talks with Papa."

"Yes."

"I talk simply to Johan."

"My dear, my dear, it's not that. I, I myself was unreal ... in those days ... in my feelings, which came out of books which I had read. Papa used to answer ... out of those same books. You ... you are different: you are simple; Erzeele, a friend of your childhood, is simple, a simple-minded fellow; your talks are bound to be different."

"Our talks are simple."

"But, when I came in, I saw that you were talking confidentially, intimately, intimately and eagerly ... and that he was holding your hand, holding your two hands."

"Yes, you saw that: he was consoling me."

"That's exactly what he mustn't do. That's exactly what he mustn't be allowed to do. Oh, Mathilde, I am an old woman and I am your mother, especially now that you have no mother of your own, and I am Addie's mother ... and I understand, I understand everything ... because I myself have suffered so much...."

"Addie's coming downstairs, Mamma."

"Promise me, dear ... to be careful."

"I ... I will be careful."

"And forgive me, forgive me for everything that I have dared to say. Kiss me. Oh, I long so intensely ... for you and Addie to be happy again!"

She took Mathilde in her arms, passionately, and kissed her twice, three times.

Addie entered.

"I'm ready, Mamma. The carriage is waiting."

"I'm coming, I'm coming, my boy."