The August morning was already sunny at that hour: there was a blue sky with white, fleecy clouds, which pa.s.sed like flocks of snowy sheep through a blue meadow; the wind urged the sheep before it, like an impetuous drover. And, while she searched for those difficult words, her mind recalled the night before and the lightning yonder, above the sea, which she divined in the distance.... It was strange, but now, in that morning light, with that placid sky at which she gazed, thinking of Van Vreeswijck and how to tell him in a single, merciful word--with that summer blue full of fleecy white, at which she was gazing so fixedly after the ecstasy and winged bliss that had uplifted her the night before--it was as if her calm, proud confidence in her knowledge of the future was wavering.... She did not know why, for after all she thought that Henri would consent to their divorcing....

They would be divorced....

And Marianne would....

Suddenly, she began to write. She wrote more than she intended to write: she now wrote the truth straight away, in an impulse of honesty, and at the end of her letter she asked Van Vreeswijck to call on her that evening.

She had just finished, when Addie came in. He kissed her and waited until she had signed her letter.

"Why aren't you bicycling with Papa?" she asked.

He said that his father had asked him to speak to her....

And now, sitting beside her, with her hand in his, he told her, without once mentioning Marianne's name, what Papa had said. His calm, almost cold, business-like words sobered her completely, while she continued pensively to look at the sky, which seemed now to be wearing a blue smile of ignorance and indifference.... Suddenly it seemed to her as if she had been dreaming.... Not that her thoughts took any definite form, for first the ideal vision whose realization had seemed so certain, then the morning doubts and now the disenchantment of the sober facts had all followed too swiftly upon one another; and she could not take it all in; she did not know what she thought. It only seemed to her as if she had been dreaming.

Automatically, she said:

"Perhaps it is better so."

She had not expected it!

She had never thought that Henri's answer would be the one which she now heard from the mouth of their son!

Did one ever know another person, though one lived with that person for years? Did she know her son, did she know herself?

But the boy held her hand affectionately.

And he read the stupefaction in her eyes:

"Tell me, honestly, Mamma. Are you disappointed?"

She was silent, gazed at the placid sky.

"Would you rather have started a fresh life ... away from Papa?"

She bowed her head, let it rest upon his shoulder:

"Addie," she said.

She made an attempt to pick her words, but her honesty was once more too strong for her:

"Yes," she said, simply.

"Then you would rather have had it so ... for your own sake?"

"I would rather have had it so, yes."

They were silent.

"I had even pictured it ... like that," she said, presently.

"Shall I speak to Papa again then, Mamma? If I tell him that you had already been thinking of it...."

"You believe...?"

"He will agree."

"Do you think so?"

"If it means the "happiness of both of you...."

"Tell me what Papa said."

"I can't remember exactly.... Only Papa thought ... that not to see me for six months at a time would be more than he could bear."

"Is that all that Papa said?"

"Yes."

But he gave just a smile of melancholy resignation; and his look told that that was not all. She understood. She understood that they had spoken of Marianne.

"So Papa...." she repeated.

"Would rather stay with us, Mamma."

"With us," she repeated. "We three together?"

"Yes."

"It means going on living ... a lie," she said, in a blank voice.

"Then I will speak to Papa again."

"No, Addie."

"Why not?..."

"No, don't do that. Don't ask Papa ... to think it over again. It is perhaps too late, after all; and besides ... Papa is right. About you."

"About me?"

"He could not go six months without you. And I...."

"And you, Mamma...."

"I couldn't either."

"Yes, you could."