He tried to look into her eyes, but they avoided his. She twisted and turned as though she were in the grasp of a ravisher; she dragged herself along the floor, while his hand held her arms. Suddenly his eyes met hers and he held and pierced them deeply with his grey-blue glance. She fell back helplessly against a chair; her features, now relaxed, hung slackly, like an old woman's; her lips drooped. She lay huddled and moaning, with a monotonous moan of pain. Then she began to shake her head, up and down, up and down, grating the back of her head against the chair.
"Get up, Emilie."
She obeyed, let him help her up, hung like a rag in his hands. She fell back on her bed, with her eyes closed; and he rang the bell. It was Constance who entered.
"We will undress her now, Mamma; she's much quieter. I'll ring for Aunt Adeline to help you."
He rang again and asked Truitje to go for Mrs. van Lowe. But, as soon as Emilie felt the touch of Constance' fingers, she began to moan anew and opened her eyes:
"Oh, Auntie, Auntie, you're a dear, you're a dear! You never, never asked me!"
"Perhaps it will be better to leave her now, Mamma," whispered Addie.
Constance left the room, promising to remain within call with Adeline.
Emilie lay on the bed, her eyes staring straight before her, as though she still beheld all the horror of the past; and she went on moaning in fear and pain:
"Addie, Addie, it was Eduard ... it was Eduard who murdered Henri.... Oh, nobody knows, nobody knows!... Uncle and Aunt never asked me.... People at the Hague say that it was I who made Eduard unhappy, that that is why he has gone away, disappeared.... Perhaps I did, perhaps I did make him unhappy.... I don't know, I don't know.... You see, I didn't know what I was doing when I married Eduard. I thought ... I thought it would be all right, I thought I cared for him ... Ssh, Addie, don't tell anybody, but I cared for Henri, for my brother, only. I swear, it was all quite beautiful what he and I felt for each other; there was never anything between us, never anything to be ashamed of!... But my life, Addie, my poor life, oh, my poor little life was quite wrecked, because I did not know, because I felt so strangely, because I fought against the common things of life, against my marriage, against my husband, and because all that was stronger than what I tried to do, what I myself did not really know, nor Henri, nor Henri either I...."