“What a wise remark,” answered Marie. “Just like the men. ’Tis your natural vanity that makes you say such a thing, though you are but a boy yourself. Wait a bit, I’ll teach you.”
She ran after him round the table, whilst he, mocking her, deftly skipped over a chair, which he quickly placed in her way. Freddie and Lili roared with laughter at their antics. All at once he rushed out of the room, and Marie after him.
“What a girl that Marie is!” cried Freddie wonderingly. It passed her understanding. After a while Marie returned, all out of breath.
“Did you catch him?” asked Lili.
“Of course not,” she answered. “That boy is like a goat, so nimble, he skips over everything. Ah, ’tis a treat, a run like that. I wish I were a boy.”
Freddie left, and Lili accompanied her down-stairs; Marie was coming down directly. But she stayed at the window for a while, and looked out. In the falling twilight, which was wrapping everything in a transparent ashen-hued mist, lay the canal, green and still, overshadowed by the leafy boughs of the bordering trees. Beyond it lay the Maliebaan, dim in the gathering shadows, with a moist thin veil of grayish dew rising upward from its surface.
Marie looked out and sighed. Yes; she would always laugh away that feeling, that cruel, gnawing bitterness, out of her heart, as she had done just now. She was growing old, downright old, and tiresome. Without mercy for herself she would wrench away that blossom from her soul, she would again and again blot out that vision. It was torture, but still she must do it.
And as she stared away into that melancholy mist, ascending in gray layers over the valley yonder, a beloved face rose up before her moist eyes—a manly face, with an expression of frankness and sincerity in its eyes, and beaming with a winning smile; but it was not upon her, but upon Eline, that that smile threw its brightness.
The tramcars running between the Ouden Schevening road and the Kurhaus were thronged. At the junction of the Anna Paulownastraat and the Laan Copes van Cattenburgh they were stormed by waiting crowds, and in a moment they were filled to overflowing—inside, outside, and on the platforms. There was a vast amount [[160]]of pushing to obtain even the merest standing-room, among the numbers of ladies, who, nervous and excited, fluttered about in their gay toilets, peering through the windows in the hope of finding a vacant spot. The conductors pulled the bells, and shouted to those who were left behind, who turned away and began to watch for the next car to arrive. The horses started, and the faces of those who had managed to wedge their way in, and were seated packed close as herrings, now beamed with happiness after the successful struggle.
“What a crowd! It’s fearful,” said Eline, looking down upon the surging mass with a placid smile.