tary flicker and went on dully, with her hands lying motionless on her black dress:
"Well, I have nothing against it, Constance. If Marianne likes the idea, I do too."
Her voice sounded as if she were withdrawing herself from everything, including her children's interests. She sat there, just blankly staring, leaving everything to them. Louise and Frans went through the house looking out the furniture for which there would be room at Baarn. Constance heard their voices on the stairs:
"So," Louise was saying, "we have, in addition to the furniture in Mamma's bedroom, in Marianne's and mine, enough for one spare-room; then there's the piano, from the drawing-room, and the china-cabinet . . ."
"Isn't the china-cabinet ever so much too big . . . for those small rooms down there?"
"Yes, perhaps . . . Perhaps we had better leave the china-cabinet . . ."
Bertha heard as well as Constance: perhaps Louise and Frans were speaking loudly in the passage on purpose. Bertha, however, did not stir: her eyes remained vague, her hands lifeless. It was obviously a matter of supreme indifference to her whether they took the china-cabinet with them or not . . .
And, as she did not speak at all, Constance was obliged to ask:
