who cannot make him happy? I am always thinking about it. I get up with it, I go to bed with it; I see the two of them in the smoke of my cigarette; and I am beginning to worry and worry about it: a proof that I'm getting old. . . . And I can see that Constance also worries about it, that the thought of Addie . . . and that woman is always, always with her . . . oh, everything might have turned out so happily! . . . But it was not to be, it was not to be. . . . A lovely summer morning like this almost makes a fellow melancholy. . . . Yes, it makes you melancholy because you know for certain that it won't long remain so, that calmness in the air, that beautiful clear sky, that green and gold of the trees, and that it will soon become different, soon become different, full of sadness and of gloomy things."
He suddenly spread out his arms, for Klaasje, pursued by the dog, came rushing down the path in his direction without seeing him, as it were blinded by the game which she was playing.
"Uncle Henri, Uncle Henri, let me go! Jack will catch me!"
"Mind and don't tumble into the water," Van der Welcke warned her; but she had already released herself from his arms and was running on, with the dog after her.
"She's gone wild," he thought, "wild with the joy of life. She is beginning to wake up, physically and mentally. It is as though a twilight were withdrawing from her, a twilight which is beginning to steal over me. What is the matter with me? What do I feel? Oh, I long to go bicycling, to go for a long spin . . . but Addie's not here; and, even when he is, he has no time, and Guy's working! Suppose I asked Gerdy: she's fond of a little run."
