Van Oudijck had been to the government-building that day. LÉonie met him the moment he returned.

“The raden-aju pangÉran is here,” she said. “She has been here quite an hour, Otto. She wishes to speak to you badly. She has been waiting for you.”

“LÉonie,” he said, “I want you to look through these letters. I often get libels of this sort and I’ve never mentioned them to you. But perhaps it’s better that you should not be left in ignorance. Perhaps it’s better for you to know. But please don’t take them to heart. I needn’t assure you that I don’t for a moment believe one word of all this filth. So don’t get upset about it and give me back the letters presently yourself. Don’t leave them lying about.... And send the raden-aju pangÉran to my office....”

LÉonie, carrying the letters in her hand, went to the back-verandah and returned with the princess, a distinguished-looking, grey-haired woman, with a proud, royal bearing in her still slender figure. Her eyes were a sombre black; her mouth, which was widened in outline by betel-nut-juice and which grinned with filed, black, lacquered teeth, was like a grimacing mask and spoilt the proud nobility of her expression. She wore a black satin kabaai fastened with jewelled buttons. It was above all her grey hair and her sombre eyes that gave her a peculiar admixture of venerable dignity and smouldering passion. Tragedy hung over her old age. She herself felt that fate was pressing tragically upon her and hers; and she placed her only hope in the far-reaching, divinely-appointed power of her first-born, Sunario, the Regent of Labuwangi.

While the old princess preceded Van Oudijck into the office, LÉonie examined the letters in the middle gallery. They were lampoons couched in foul language, about her and Addie and Theo. Always wrapped in the selfish dream of her own life, she never troubled greatly about what people thought or said, especially as she knew that she could always and immediately win every one again with her personality, with her smile. She possessed a tranquil charm which was irresistible. She herself never spoke ill of others, out of indifference; she made amiable excuses for everything and everybody; and she was loved ... when people saw her. But she considered these dirty letters, spat out from some dark corner, tiresome and unpleasant, even though Van Oudijck did not believe them. Suppose that one day he began to believe things? She must be prepared for it. She must above all retain for that possible day her most charming tranquillity, all her invulnerability, all her inviolability. Who could have sent the letters? Who hated her so much, who could be interested in writing like this to her husband? How strange that the thing should be known!... Addie? Theo? How did people know? Was it Oorip? No, not Oorip.... But who then? And was everything actually known? She had always thought that what happened in the secret chambers would never be known on the housetops. She had even believed—it was simple of her—that the men never discussed her with one another, that they might discuss other women, but not herself. Her mind harboured such simple illusions, despite all her experience, in a simplicity which harmonized with the half-perverse, half-childish poetry of her rose-hued imagination. Could she then not always keep hidden the secrets of her mystery, the secrets of reality? It annoyed her for a moment, that reality, which was being revealed despite her superficial correctness.... Thoughts and dreams always remained secret. It was the actions that were so troublesome. For an instant she thought of being more careful in future, of refraining. But she saw before her, in imagination, Theo and Addie, her fair love and her dark love; and she felt that she was too weak for that. She knew that in this she could not conquer her passions, though she controlled them. Would they end by proving her destruction, notwithstanding all her tactfulness? But she laughed at the thought: she had a firm faith in her invulnerability. Life always glided off her shoulders.

Still she wanted to prepare herself for what might happen. She had no higher ideal in life than to be free from pain, free from grief, free from poverty and to make her passions the slaves of her enjoyment, so that she might possess this enjoyment as long as possible, lead this life as long as possible. She reflected what she should say and do if Van Oudijck suddenly questioned her, suspicious because of these anonymous letters. She reflected whether she had better break with Theo. Addie was enough for her. And she lost herself in her calculations, as in the vague combinations of a play about to be enacted. Then, suddenly, she heard the raden-aju pangÉran’s voice sounding loudly in the office, in between her husband’s calmer accents. She listened, inquisitively, foreseeing a tragedy, and was quietly relieved that this tragedy also was gliding away from her. She crept into Van Oudijck’s bedroom; the communicating-doors were always left open for coolness and only a screen separated the bedroom from the office. She peeped past the screen. And she saw the old princess more greatly excited than she had ever seen any Javanese woman. The raden-aju was beseeching Van Oudijck in Malay; he was assuring her in Dutch that what she asked was impossible. LÉonie listened more closely. And she now heard the old princess imploring the resident to show mercy to her second son, the Regent of Ngadjiwa. She entreated Van Oudijck to remember her husband, the pangÉran, whom he had loved as a father, who had loved him as a son, with a mutual affection more intense than that of an “elder and younger brother”; she conjured him to think of their famous past, of the glory of the Adiningrats, ever loyal friends of the Company, its allies in war, its most faithful vassals in peace; she conjured him not to decree the downfall of their race, on which a doom had descended since the pangÉran’s death, driving it into an abyss of fatal destruction. She stood before the resident like a Niobe, like a tragic mother, flinging up her arms in the vehemence of her protestations, while tears poured from her sombre eyes and only the wide mouth, painted with brown betel-juice, was like the grimace of a mask. But from this grimace the fluent phrases of protestation and conjuration were pouring forth; and she wrung her hands in entreaty and beat her breast in contrition.

Van Oudijck answered in a firm but gentle voice, telling her that certainly he had loved the old pangÉran most sincerely, that he respected the old race highly, that no one would be better pleased than he to uphold their lofty position. But then he grew more severe and asked her whom the Adiningrats had to blame for the fate that was now pursuing her. And, with his eyes looking into hers, he said that it was she! She fell back, flaring up with rage; but he repeated it again and yet again. Her sons were her children: bigoted and proud and incurable gamblers. And it was gambling, that low passion, which was wrecking their greatness. Their race was staggering to its downfall through their insatiable greed of gain. How often did it not happen that a month went by at Ngadjiwa before the regent paid the native heads their salaries? She protested that it was true: it was at her instigation that her son had taken the money of the treasury, to pay gambling debts. But she also swore that it would never happen again. And where, asked Van Oudijck, had a regent, descended from an ancient race, ever behaved as the Regent of Ngadjiwa had at the race-ball? The mother lamented: it was true, it was true; fate dogged their footsteps and had clouded her son’s mind; but it would never, never happen again. She swore by the soul of the old pangÉran that it would never happen again, that her son would win back his dignity. But Van Oudijck grew more vehement and reproached her with never having exercised a good influence over her sons and nephews, with being the evil genius of her family, because a demon of gambling and greed held her fast in its claws. She began to shriek with anguish, she, the old princess, who looked down upon the resident, the Hollander without birth or breeding, shrieking with anguish because he dared to speak like this and was entitled to do so. She flung out her arms, she begged for mercy; she begged him not to urge her son’s dismissal by the government, which would act as the resident suggested, which would follow the advice of such a highly esteemed official; she begged him to have pity and show patience a little longer. She would speak to her son; Sunario would speak to his brother; they would bring him back to his senses, which had been bewildered by drink and play and women. Oh, if the resident would only have pity, if he would only relent! But Van Oudijck remained inexorable. He had shown patience for so long. It was now exhausted. Since her son, at the instigation of the native physician, relying on his talisman, had resisted him with his insolent silence, which, as he firmly believed, made him invulnerable to his enemies, he would prove that he, the spokesman of the government, the representative of the queen, was the stronger, physician and talisman notwithstanding. There was no alternative: his patience was at an end; his love for the pangÉran did not allow of further indulgence; his feeling of respect for their race was not such that he could transfer it to an unworthy son. It was settled: the regent would be dismissed.

The princess had listened to him, unable to credit his words, seeing the abyss yawn before her. And, with a yell like that of a wounded lioness, with a scream of pain, she pulled the jewelled hairpins from her head, till her long grey hair fell streaming about her face; with a rending tug she tore open her satin kabaai; beside herself with anguish, she threw herself before the feet of the European, took firm hold of his foot with her two hands, planted it, with a movement which made Van Oudijck stagger, on her bowed neck and cried aloud and screamed that she, the daughter of the sultans of Madura, would for ever be his slave, that she swore to be nothing but his slave, if only he would have mercy on her son this time and not plunge her house into the abyss of shame which she saw yawning around her. And she clutched the European’s foot, as though with the strength of despair, and held that foot, like a yoke of servitude, with the sole and heel of the shoe pressed upon her flowing grey hair, upon her neck bowed to the floor. Van Oudijck trembled with emotion. He realized that this high-spirited woman would never humble herself like that, with evident spontaneity, to the lowest depths of humiliation that she could conceive, would not resort to the most vehement utterance of actual grief that a woman could ever display, with her hair unbound and the ruler’s foot planted on her neck, if she had not been shaken to the very depths of her soul, if she did not feel desperate to the pitch of self-destruction. And he hesitated for a moment. But only for a moment. He was a man of considered principles, of fixed, a priori logic, immovable when he had come to a decision, wholly inaccessible to impulse. With the utmost respect, he at last released his foot from the princess’ clinging grasp. Holding out both hands to her, with visible compassion, visible emotion, he raised her from the floor. He made her sit down; and she fell into a chair, broken, sobbing aloud. For a moment, perceiving his gentleness, she thought that she had won. But when he calmly but decidedly shook his head in denial, she understood that it was over. She panted for breath, half-swooning, her kabaai still open, her hair still unbound.

At that moment LÉonie entered the room. She had seen the drama enacted before her eyes and felt a thrill of artistic emotion. She experienced something like compassion in her barren soul. She approached the princess, who flung herself into her arms, woman seeking woman in the unreasoning despair of that inevitable doom. And LÉonie, turning her beautiful eyes on Van Oudijck, murmured a single word of intercession and whispered:

“Give in! Give in!”

And for the second time Van Oudijck wavered. Never had he refused his wife anything, however costly, for which she asked. But this meant the sacrifice of his principle never to reconsider a decision, always to persist in what he had resolved should happen. Then had he always controlled the future. Thus things always happened as he willed. Then had he never shown any weakness. And he answered that it was impossible.

In his obstinacy, he did not divine the sacred moments in which a man must not insist upon his own will, but must piously surrender to the pressure of the hidden forces. These moments he did not respect, acknowledge or recognize; no, never. He was a man with a clear, logically deduced, simple, masculine sense of duty, a man of a plain and simple life. He would never know that, lurking under the simple life, are all those forces which together make the omnipotent hidden force. He would have laughed at the idea that there are nations which have a greater control over that force than the western nations have. He would shrug his shoulders—and continue his own road—at the mere supposition that among the nations there are a few individuals in whose hands that force loses its omnipotence and becomes an instrument. No experience would teach him. He would perhaps for an instant be nonplussed. But immediately afterwards he would grasp the chain of his logic in his virile hand and link up the iron actualities together....

He saw LÉonie lead the old princess from his office, bowed and sobbing.

A deep emotion, an utterly agitating compassion, brought the tears to his eyes. And before those tearful eyes rose the vision of that Javanese whom he loved like a father.

But he did not give in.