"Do you feel so rotten?" asked Steyn.
Harold Dercksz nodded.
"Shall I send for Dr. Thielens to come and see you?"
Harold Dercksz shook his head:
"There's nothing he can do. Thank you, Frans. I know what to do for it: the great thing is to pay no attention to it...."
He was silent again, sat staring in front of him, holding his hand before his eyes because the light outside, reflected by the snow, hurt his face. And he went on breathing with dull, irregular jerks.... The old man was dead.... The old man was dead.... At last.... The Thing, the terrible Thing was passing, was not yet past, was trailing, rustling, staring at him with its fixed, spectral eyes, which he had known ever since his childhood; but it was passing, passing.... Oh, how he had looked and looked for the old man's death! He had hated him, the murderer of his father, who had been dear to him when a child; but, first as a child, afterwards as a young man, he had been silent, for his mother's sake, had been silent for sixty years. Only now, quite lately, he had spoken to Daan, because Daan had come from India in dismay, knowing everything, knowing everything at this late date, after the death of the baboe, who had spoken to her son, the mantri.... He had hated him, in his secret self, hated his father's murderer. Then his hatred had cooled, he had come to understand the passion and the self-defence of the crime; then he had felt pity for the old man, who had to carry the burden of his remorse for all those years; then his pity had grown into compassion, deep, quivering compassion for both of them, for Takma and for his mother....
"Give him a stab; rather he than you!"
Oh, that passion, oh, the hatred, of years ago, in the woman that she had then been, a still young and always attractive woman, she who was now dragging out the last years of her life: did she remember? Did she remember, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, in that red twilight of the window-curtains?... He, Harold Dercksz, had longed for the death of Takma, longed for the death of his mother ... so that for both of them, the old people, the thing, the terrible Thing might have passed entirely and plunged into the depths of what had been.... He had longed; and now ... now the old man was dead!
Harold Dercksz breathed again:
"No, Frans," he said, in his soft, dull voice, "we cannot tell Mother.... Remember how very old she is...."