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 you are angry!" she said, pa.s.sionately, 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 irresistible sob, 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, a.s.suring 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d!--she would also hide later in her secret self. She saw nothing in herself. And she knew that n.o.body 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 grace that 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 compa.s.sion 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 of us 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 G.o.d, O G.o.d, must I also suffer as she is doing ... must I also suffer some day ... soon, perhaps ... if one cannot have life without suffering?..."

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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and not the beneficent anaesthesia 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 she asked 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 idea obtruded 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 to clear her hoa.r.s.e 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?"