Elly said nothing, but she thought of her childhood, spent with the old man, and of her doll's-house, which she ruled so very seriously, as if it had been a little world.
"Yes, Lot," said Ottilie, "you felt it too: you went off to Italy to breathe again, to live, to live.... In our family, they had lived. Mamma still lived, but her own past clung to her.... I don't know, Elly; I don't think I'm very sensitive; and yet ... and yet I did feel it so: an oppression of things of the past all over one. I couldn't go on like that. I longed for my own life."
"That's true," said Lot, "you released yourself altogether. More so than I did. I was never able to leave Mamma for good. I'm fond of her. I don't know why: she has not been much of a mother to me. Still I'm fond of her, I often feel sorry for her. She is a child, a spoilt child. She was overwhelmed, in her youth, with one long adoration. The men were mad on her. Now she is old and what has she left? Nothing and nobody. Steyn and she lead a cat-and-dog life. I pity Steyn, but I sometimes feel for Mamma. It's a dreadful thing to grow old, especially for the sort of woman that she was, a woman—one may as well speak plainly—who lived for her passions. Mamma has never had anything in her but love. She is an elementary woman; she needs love and caresses, so much so that she has not been able to observe the conventions. She respected them only to a certain point. When she fell in love, everything else went by the board."
"But why did she marry? I didn't marry! And I am in love too."
"Ottilie, Mamma lived in a different social period. People used to marry then. They marry still, for the most part. Elly and I got married."
"I have nothing to say against it, if you know that you have found each other for life. Did Mamma know that with any of her husbands? She was mad on all the three of them."
"She now hates them all."
"Therefore she ought not to have married."
"No, but she lived in a different social period. And, as I say, Ottilie, people still get married."
"You disapprove of my not marrying."