Addie returned to the Hague that evening; and seldom had he felt so heavy and listless, as if he knew nothing for himself. No, he knew nothing, nothing more for his poor self, as if he, as he grew older, daily lost more and more of the knowledge that is sacredly imparted for a man's own soul, like a far-lighting lamp casts its rays over the paths of his own destiny that lie dimly in the future. . . . Though he knew for others so often and so surely, for himself he knew nothing nowadays, nothing. Once he had known himself to be a dual personality; to-day he no longer knew which of the two he was. He felt like a prematurely old and decrepit young man, prematurely old and decrepit because life had become serious for him too early and opened out to him too early, so that he had fathomed it through and through: prematurely old and decrepit because his own life later had not trembled in the pure balance of his own twin forces of soul. He had felt fettered to the one; and it drew him down, while the other had not the power to lift him up to the height of pure self-realization. . . .
He walked home from the station, late in the evening. He dragged himself along, his step was heavy and slow; over the dark masses of the Wood hung a sultry, pearl-grey summer night; the houses in the Bezuidenhout faded away white in the evening silence. Light rain-clouds dreamed in the sky: it would doubtless rain to-morrow; and far behind them lurked the threatening summer storm. For the present the evening sombreness drifted on as
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