And he could not hold himself in check. The house was silent. Anna had gone back to her kitchen; the old lady was sitting upstairs, alone with the companion. A small gas-jet was burning in the morning-room; another in the passage. Afternoon darkness and silence hovered in the atmosphere of the little house in which the old lady had lived so long, had so long sat waiting at her window upstairs, in her high chair.
"Roelofsz," said Daan Dercksz.
He was a head shorter than the doctor; he took hold of a button of the doctor's waistcoat.
"Yes-yes," said Roelofsz. "What is it, Dercksz?"
"Roelofsz ... I've heard about it."
"What?" shouted the doctor, deaf.
"I've heard everything ... in India."
"What?" shouted the doctor, no longer deaf, but dismayed.
"I've heard everything, heard it all ... in India."
The doctor looked at him with rolling eyes; and his pendulous lips slavered in his clean-shaven monk's-face, while his breath panted, reeking between the crumbly teeth.