"Good-bye, Tilly."
She was silent, sat staring before her, with her hands clasped over her knees. No, she did not understand him, but she could not act otherwise than he wished.
He was gone; and suddenly she felt very lonely. She heard him upstairs packing, rummaging in his cupboards.
And she began to reflect, sadly:
"He acts differently and speaks differently from anybody else. Divorced? Oh, no, I don't want that ... if he doesn't want it for himself!... I ... at least ... not yet.... No, no, nor ever.... Oh, I don't know, I don't know!... I am fond of Johan.... If I were free now, if I were a girl still.... But Addie, the children.... I don't know, I don't know.... That was why Addie thought it would be well ... for us not to see each other ... for a time. How he will miss the children!... Oh dear, is he really, really going? Yes, I hear him upstairs ... packing.... What will people say? Not that it matters. We can say that he has to read, quietly, out there ... at Driebergen.... We can tell people something of the kind ... even if they do understand.... I simply can't go back to Driebergen. ... Oh, how will it work out, how will it all work out? That is just what Addie doesn't know either.... Do I? No, Heaven help me, I don't know any more than he does!... I am fond of Johan: shall I grow fonder of him, now that I am less fond of Addie? I don't know, I don't know.... Oh, if only I hadn't my children! ... As it is, I could wish, my God, how I could wish, for his sake and the children's, that I knew how to be happy at Driebergen, in that house of theirs, with all of them, and that I could go back to it! Shall I ever go back to it?... Shall I be Johan's wife one day, after all?... Oh, it is all so dark and uncertain!... Addie says a solution will come of itself.... We know nothing, he says.... Must I let it come as it will?... But how will it come?... Oh, even Addie, who is so wise, can find no solution!... There is ... there is no solution yet!... Will there ever be one?... Oh, if I could go back ... to the house down there!... Should I ever be able to? Perhaps years hence! Perhaps never! Who can tell?...Is Johan ... really fond of me? Not only because he admires me ... not only for that?... Oh, that was the only reason why Addie loved me!... I know it now, I know it: that was his one idea, to have healthy children.... Now we are parted: parted for ever?... Or shall we come together again one day? Shall we ever become husband and wife again ... or not?... I do care for Johan. He is so matter-of-fact, so simple: I should have become very happy and simple with him, without all this thinking about things which I can't grasp or feel ... and which came haunting me down there, at Driebergen, gradually.... Oh, if I could only force myself to live there again!... But perhaps I never can! Perhaps, in three or four years' time, I shall be Johan's wife ... and have to give up the children, the poor children, to Addie!..."
Now she sobbed, because she did not know. The days and months would drift past slowly and slowly before she knew....
There is a sacred knowledge for ourselves, a knowledge so sacred that we know it only ... when the future is here....
CHAPTER XXXI
The months drifted by.