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:
