man might be, who looked an old, old man though he was not more than fifty, a gleam of intelligence shone deep down in his suspicious glance; and his long, lean fingers were those of an artist: impotent to paint or model, in lime, colour, wood or sound, the fluttering, ever-present dream of a beauty only just divined.
They both strove to reassure him, said that they happened to be at the Hague and so had come to look him up; and, after the first shock, he really did not strike them as strange or more ill than usual. Suddenly even a ray of sympathy seemed to shoot through him and he sat down between them, took their hands and delivered himself of his complaint:
"Hush! They're always listening behind the door, the brutes!" he whispered, timidly. "The landlady and her brother! I can't call my soul my own; they're always spying. . . . When I'm undressing, when I go to bed, when I have my meals . . . they're always spying. I can hear them grinning. . . . They're standing there now, to hear if we're talking about them. . . . And, when I open the door, they're gone in a moment . . . so quickly, just like ghosts. . . . The other day, he lay under my bed all night. I'm getting used to it, I no longer mind. . . . But, properly speaking, I can't call my soul my own. Any one with less steady nerves than mine simply could not stand it, could never stand it. . . ."
"But, Ernst, why don't you move?"
He knew the question well, he recognized the motive. He gave a kind and condescending little smile, because they did not know, because they were so coarse of fibre.
"I can't very well move," he said. "You see . . . I have everything here . . . everything here. . . ."
