“Terrible! Why?”
“Now I won’t sleep to-night,” she screamed in despair, and she threw her head on his shoulder and sobbed. [[306]]
“Why don’t you rather come and stay with us again?” he asked softly. “You would be so comfortable with us.”
“No, not that.”
“Why not?”
“It would never do. I am certain of it. It is very kind of you, Henk, to ask me, but it would not do. Sometimes I feel as if I could strike Betsy, and I feel that just at the moment when she speaks nicely to me, as she did this afternoon, for instance. I had to restrain myself with all my might from striking her.”
He sighed, with a despairing face. To him she remained a puzzle.
“Then let us go down-stairs,” said he.
And as they were going down she leant heavily on his arm, trembling with the cold, which only now she began to feel.
The winter went by, and Eline remained in the same condition.