Eline did not know what to decide, but the old lady herself urged Eline not to refuse her uncle’s invitation, and go to Brussels. When Daniel Vere had left, Madame van Raat, as though crushed under a heavy disappointment, remained seated motionless on her chair; and her gray head, with its dull, staring eyes, drooped with even more than its wonted languor upon her chest. In two days Eline would leave her; there was the end then of all her expectations. She had hoped, old and weak as she was, to be of some use to this young life, and to infuse a fresh vigour into this dulled youth, and—and she guessed it—Eline grew more and more listless; Eline longed for change. How could she, old woman that she was, have had such presumption?
Eline did not fail to notice this silent grief, and a great despair overmastered her, a despair at her own egoism. She had not given a thought to the old lady when she wrote to Uncle Daniel, it was only of herself that she had thought; and now she caused the old lady pain by her departure, while she felt convinced that she, after her change of residence, would remain the same as she, faded in body and soul, had now been for the last two years, and, amid nervous sobbing, fell back on the sofa, to rise again immediately in a wild, indefinite terror. Her eyes glittered wildly, and her fingers were constantly moving, touching a vase here, tangling the fringe of the curtains, or scratching fantastic figures on the bevapoured window-panes. It seemed to her suddenly as if she had just awakened from a dream, and the memory of what had passed before completely forsook her.
“I suppose you did not understand me?” she asked doubtfully of the old lady, whose sad glance had constantly followed her.
“I—I think—I did!” stammered she, inwardly shocked at the picture of lost happiness which Eline presented.
Eline looked at her with a vacant stare; for a moment she felt a great regret at her confession, of which she scarcely longer remembered the words. But the sympathy beamed from the old lady’s eyes reassured her.
“You did understand me? You understand why it is that I can no longer be happy?” she asked in a voice of bitter sadness, as once more she sank down on her footstool. [[266]]
The old lady did not answer, but, with her eyes full of tears, she threw her arms round Eline’s neck and kissed her. Both remained thus for a moment in silence.
“And can you now forgive me for leaving you?”
“Oh, why do you not stay with me?”
“I’m a trouble and a sorrow to you. I do not give you the slightest pleasure. I can do nothing for you, and you can do nothing for me.”