though in hushed expectation. Everything was still: the trees, the houses, the clouds. There was hardly anyone about; a last tram came rumbling out of the distance, from Scheveningen; and its bell seemed to ring through the space of the evening, very far behind him.
He walked on, dragged himself along past the houses. He was tired out, as he was every time that he practised hypnotism; in addition to this, it always broke his heart to leave Driebergen. How united he was with everybody and everything there! The house was his father's and his; the family was his mother's and his. As the child of his two parents, he felt at home there, in that great sombre house. But he no longer lived there, no longer worked there. In the crudely-bright, small, motley-painted house towards which he was wending, his wife awaited him; and he would find his children.
Healthy children, a healthy wife: he had all that. What he had longed for, in his anxiety at what he saw in his mother's family, he now possessed: a healthy wife and healthy children. How they both of them loved the children; how united they were, where the children were concerned! All their difference arose from a spiritual misunderstanding, because at first they had not known. . . . Know? Did he know now? Did he know that he ought never to have taken a wife like Mathilde? Did he not know that it was his fault?
There was nothing else for him to do than to continue the sacrifice, all his life long; but the sacrifice was very heavy: living and working in contradiction to his impulses, in a sphere that was not his. It was this that made him ill and prematurely old. He saw no future before him. The sacrifice was killing something deep down in himself.
He felt a sudden rebellion: it was not a man's
