Yes, she was dying, dying peacefully.... Beside her bed Thérèse knelt and prayed, Thérèse who did not know, so Harold thought: nobody ... nobody knew but himself and Daan.... The Thing ... the Thing was passing.... Listen, upstairs his mother was sighing away her last few breaths; and at each breath the Thing passed, passed farther, trailing its misty veil: leaves rustled, the thaw poured on as in a stream of tears, spectres loomed behind the trees, but the Thing ... the Thing was passing!...
Oh, for years, for sixty long years he had seen the Thing dragging past, so slowly, so lingeringly, as if it would never pass, as if it would tarry for ever, too long for a human life yearning for the end! Sixty years long he had seen it thus, the Thing; sixty years long it had stared him in the eyes.... Listen, Mamma was moaning more loudly, more violently for a while; they could hear Ottilie sobbing more passionately....
The companion came downstairs. There stood or sat the children, elderly people all.
"It is over," she said, softly.
They wept, the old people; they embraced one another; Aunt Floor screamed:
"Ah!... Kassian!... That poor-r-r, dhear-r-r Mamma!"
Over the whole house hovered the emotion of death which had come and was going....
Harold Dercksz gazed before him.... His eyes of pain stared from his face, but he did not move in his chair.
The Thing: he saw the terrible Thing! It was turning at the last bend of its long, long, endless path....
And it plunged headlong, into an abyss.