"You say perhaps to everything. Say yes."

"Well, then, yes."

"Are we both small?"

"Yes."

"Both of us?"

"Yes."

"In sympathy?"

"Yes."

The bells:

"Yes--yes--yes!" she laughed; and the little bells tinkled merrily, the shrill little silver bells. "Uncle, I drink to it."

"To what?"

"To our small ... sympathy."

"Here goes!"

Their champagne-gla.s.ses touched, with a crystal note. They drank.

"What are you drinking to?" asked Paul.

She put her finger to her tiny mouth. She was radiant and, in her excitement, she became very pretty, with her shining eyes. She felt that Brauws was looking at her; and she felt that Brauws was still angry. And, feeling mischievous and happy, with a desire to tease them all, Brauws, Paul and Van der Welcke, she murmured, with an airy grace:

"That's our secret; Uncle's and mine...."

"A secret?" asked Van Vreeswijck.

She laughed. The bells rang out merrily:

"And you," she said to Van Vreeswijck, maliciously, "you sha'n't know the secret ever!..."

CHAPTER XVII

The men remained behind to smoke; Constance went to the drawing-room with Adeline and Marianne.

"You're looking so happy to-night, Aunt Constance," said Marianne. "Don't you think so, Aunt Adeline? Tell me why."

The girl herself looked happy, radiant as though with visible rays, a great light flashing from her sparkling eyes.

"Yes, Auntie's looking very well," said the simple little fair-haired woman.

"That's because I think it so nice to have all of you with me."

Marianne knelt down beside her, in her caressing way:

"She is so nice, isn't she, Aunt Adeline? I say, Aunt Adeline, isn't she a darling? So nice, so jolly, so homy. I adore Aunt Constance these days."

And she embraced Constance impetuously.

"Yes, Constance," said Adeline, "I'm very fond of you too."

And she took her sister-in-law's hand. She was a very gentle, simple, fair-haired little woman, the quiet, obedient little wife of her big, noisy Gerrit; and the family thought her insignificant and boring. Because Constance had at once sought her affection and valued her affection, she had, after her first surprise, grown very fond of Constance. She never went out in the evening, because of the children, except when Constance invited her. And she sat there, happy to be with Constance, with her gentle smile on her round, fair, motherly little face, pleasant and comfortable with her matronly little figure, now too plump for prettiness.

The men joined them; and, when Constance saw Brauws come in with the others, she thought that he looked strange, pale under the rough bronze of his cheeks. His deep, grey eyes seemed to lose themselves in their own sombre depths; and for the first time she examined his features in detail: they were somewhat irregular in outline, with the short-cropped hair; his nose was large and straight and the heavy eyebrows arched sombrely over the sombre eyes; his temples were broad and level; his cheekbones wide; and all that part of his face was energetic, intelligent, rough and sombre, a little Gothic and barbarian, but yet curiously ascetic, with the asceticism of the thinker. But the mouth might have belonged to quite another face: almost weak, more finely and purely drawn than any of his other features; the lips fresh, without any heavy sensuality; the white teeth seemed to hold a laughing threat as though they would bite: a threat that gave him the look of a beast of prey. And yet that mouth, the moustache and the chin had something more delicate about them, as though they belonged to another face; his voice was gentle; and his laugh, which every now and then burst out naturally and clearly, was charming, had a note of kindliness, which softened all that was rough and threatening into something surprisingly lovable. In his vigorous, broad, powerful movements he had retained an almost unceremonious freedom, which most certainly remained to him from his workman years: an indifference to the chair in which he sat, to the mantelpiece against which he leant; an indifference which seemed a strong and virile, easy and natural grace in the man of culture whose hands had laboured: something original and almost impulsive, which, when it did not charm, was bound to appear antipathetic, rude and rough to any one who was expecting the manners prescribed by social convention for a gentleman in a drawing-room. Constance was sometimes surprised that she, of all women, was not offended by this unceremonious freedom, that she was even attracted by it; but a nervous girl like Marianne--herself a delicate, fragile little doll of boudoir culture--would tingle to her finger-tips with irritation at that impulsive naturalness, which was too s.p.a.cious for her among the furniture of Aunt Constance'

drawing-room. And a sort of uncontrollable resentment surged through her when Brauws came to where she sat and said:

"Do you always ... take such an interest in evolution, freule?"

She looked up at him quickly. He was bending forward a little, in a protecting and almost mocking att.i.tude; and she saw only the barbaric, Teutonic part of his head and the beast-of-prey threat of his handsome teeth. She hated it all, because it was very strong and as it were hostile to her caste. She answered, with cool irony:

"No, Mr. Brauws, only in your case."

"And to what do I owe the honour?" asked Brauws.

"It's only natural. You were not like everybody ... once. Now that I am meeting you just as I meet everybody, it interests me to know how it came about."

"From weakness, you think? Is that your secret idea?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps you are right. And, if it were so, would you despise me?"

The conversation was getting on her nerves. She tried to evade it:

"You may be weak, you may be strong," she said, irritably. "I don't know ... and ... it doesn't interest me so very much."

"It did just now."

Again she looked up quickly, with the quick, nervous grace of all her movements, and it flashed upon her that he was very angry with her, very hostile towards her.

"Aunt Constance!" she called. "Do come and help me. Mr. Brauws isn't at all nice."

Constance came up.

"He's not nice, your friend," Marianne went on, like a spoilt child, a little frightened. "He wants ... he absolutely insists on quarrelling with me. Do take my part!"