I too had desired the child and had longed for it with fervent tenderness, picturing to myself how I could now bestow all the interest and fatherly devotion without self-constraint, from natural instinct, from overpowering love. How I should love this child and delight in the sight of its development day by day. Recalling with bitter sorrow how vaguely and distantly the lovely blossoming of Lucia's children had passed by me, because I had not participated with my entire being in their growth and their development, I now hoped after all to be father in the full sense of the word, and with clear perception and unabating interest to delight in this lovely miracle. Surely no child before it had yet breathed the air, has ever been as fervently loved, as tenderly discussed, as devoutly looked forward to as this.
But a dark foreboding dwelt in me with relentless certainty. I knew that calamity threatened, my dreams betokened it and it became daily clearer what form this calamity would take. The glad promise had a diabolically mocking sound, the subtle perceptive faculty of my insensible being felt the falseness of the sweet announcement. Toward Elsje as she tranquilly sat by my side sewing at tiny garments and absorbed in the sweet prospect of her child, toward Elsje I could feign hopefulness and enter into her sweet phantasies - but myself I could not deceive. I knew that a picture of happiness was teasingly held out to me that my eyes would never behold. I knew that the genuineness of my conviction, the strength of my faith, would be submitted to the severest test, to the keenest torture.
Then too, through Elsje's peculiar condition, which makes certain spiritual longings speak so loudly, it became clear to me what she had so carefully hidden from me.
She always questioned me about my dreams what and whom I had seen, where I had been. And once the words escaped her:
"Oh, I wish that I could dream like you!"
"Why, Elsje? What would you do?"
"I should try to go to Holland," she said softly.
Then I understood her. It was homesickness that had taken hold upon her.
"Do you long to be back in Holland?"
She nodded mutely, but immediately added in a livelier tone: