He sank back in his chair; his shapeless bulk collapsed over his slanting paunch, as if it would fall to the floor.
At that moment there came from upstairs a shrill scream, suppressed but penetrating, as though it issued from an old throat that was being strangled; and almost at the same time the door upstairs was flung back and the companion called:
"Anna ... Anna, come quick!"
Daan Dercksz was an old man, but a shiver ran down his back like ice-cold water. The doctor started, tottering on his legs, and at last drew up his shapeless bulk and cried:
"What is it? What is it?"
And the two men hurried up the stairs as fast as they could, with Anna behind them.
There were two lamps alight in the drawing-room; and the old lady was sitting straight up in her chair. Her eyes, enormously dilated, stared from her head in tense dismay; her mouth remained open, after the scream which she had uttered, and formed a dark cavity; and she held one arm uplifted, pointing with an outstretched finger to the corner of the room, near the china-cabinet. Thus she sat, as though petrified and rigid: rigid the staring expression and the open mouth, rigid all the old face, in extreme terror, petrified the gesture of the stiffly-held arm, as though she could never lower it again. And the companion and Anna, who now went up to her together excitedly, asked:
"Mevrouw, mevrouw, what's the matter? Aren't you well? Aren't you well?"
"The-ere!" stammered the old woman. "There!... There!"
And she stared and kept on pointing. The two men had appeared in the doorway and instinctively they all turned their eyes to the corner, near the china-cabinet. There was nothing to be seen save by the eyes of the old lady, nothing save what she saw there—and she alone saw it—rising before her, nothing save what she saw rising in a paroxysm of the remorse that had overwhelmed her for years and years ... until suddenly she saw again, saw for ten or twenty seconds, in which she became petrified and rigid, while the old blood froze in her veins. She now received a shock; her hand fell in her lap; she herself dropped back against the straight pillow of her high-backed chair and her eyes closed.