"Happened? When?" asked Anton.
"Sixty years ago.... You were a boy of fifteen then.... Something happened then ... that ..."
He looked at her in amazement:
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"Something happened," she repeated. "You must remember. Something that Papa and Uncle Daan know, something that Papa has always known, something that brought Uncle Daan to Holland."
"Sixty years ago?" said Anton Dercksz.
He looked her in the eyes. The suddenness of her question had given such a shock to his self-centred, brooding brain that he suddenly saw the past of sixty years ago and clearly remembered that he had always thought that there must be something between his mother and Takma, something that they kept concealed between themselves. He had always felt this when, full of awe, almost hesitatingly, he approached his mother, once a week, and found old Takma sitting opposite her, starting nervously with that muscular jerk of his neck and seeming to listen for something.... Sixty years ago?... Something must, something must have happened. And, in his momentary clearness of vision, he almost saw the Thing, divined its presence, unveiled his father's death, sixty years ago, was wafted almost unconsciously towards the truth, with the sensitive perspicacity—lasting but a second—of an old man who, however much depraved, had in his very depravity sharpened his cerebral powers and often read the past correctly.
"Sixty years ago?" he repeated, looking at Ina with his bleared eyes. "And what sort of thing could it be?"
"Can't you remember?"
She was all agog with curiosity; her eyes flashed into his. He hardly knew her, with all her well-bred weariness of expression gone; and he couldn't endure her at any time and he hated D'Herbourg and he said: