His voice sounded manlier; and old Pauws was surprised at the energy with which he uttered the last words.... Yes, he was surprised.... That was certainly another breed than his; and those were ideas, views, conditions which were totally beyond his reach! Not to get married in church; after a few months' marriage, to allow your wife to join the Red Cross; and to feel sorrow at her leaving you, but to consider that it couldn't be different and that she was doing what she had to: those, you know, were conditions, views, ideas so far removed from his own that, in his swelling indignation at what Elly had done, they all whirled before his eyes; and he felt that he belonged to another breed, to another period. He gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, but did not wish to express any more of his utterly different and doubtless old-fashioned feelings; and, when Lot repeated his request that he should stay with him, he merely answered:
"Yes, my boy, I'll stay with you!..."
And the emphasis which he laid upon the words was the only comment that he allowed himself. Lot gave a deep sigh and left his hand in his father's. A few seconds later, the old man noticed that Lot had fallen asleep. He released his hand from his son's slack fingers and stole from the room on tiptoe, unperceived by Lot.
Pauws remained standing on the landing.... Yes, it was all whirling before his eyes. That was not the way in which he had loved, with so much self-control and philosophy and understanding of another's soul: he had loved differently, more ardently, more passionately, with simple, fierce virility.... Now, after many years, he was in his wife's house and he felt that, though she was old, he still loved her ... that he had always loved her and that, gradually, his love for her, no longer fierce, passionate or ardent—for the old years were growing cold—had become abiding and fond....
He remained standing, irresolutely.... What should he do?... Something hesitated within him: whether to stay here, in the house, or rush out into the rain! He could not have stayed another minute in Lot's sick-room: the air oppressed him; and, active old man that he was, he felt a need, after what he had heard, to move about, to shake himself, to shake himself free of the whirl of those views and ideas which were so strange to him.... And yet!...
Slowly he went down the stairs; and his heart thumped like a young man's.... Where would she be? There!... He heard her voice in the drawing-room, the voice which he had not heard for years, talking English with her son, with her son Hugh! They were laughing, they were laughing together: Hugh's voice sounded coaxing, roughly caressing; her voice sounded ... oh, it sounded as it had always sounded: so intensely sweet ... and bewitching!... Had she really grown older?... A fierce, rebellious jealousy boiled up within him because of that son who was not his son, that son whom he had seen for two seconds in Lot's room, that son who was like his father ... Trevelley! He clenched his fists. He felt inclined to dash open the door with those fists and to rush into the room and say furious words, do furious things....
But no ... no ... it was all past. Only think: years had gone by.... She was sixty: he could not imagine her that.... She was happy, so Lot had said; she would be happy, as long as her money lasted.... She was sixty years of age, but she remained a child; and not till later, when she was a very old woman—who could tell: perhaps ill and broken and miserable?—after that fellow had run through her money ...
He pulled the latch of the front-door, went out into the street, into the rain. Very softly he closed the door after him. Oh, he could not, could not come back again and hear her voice once more behind that drawing-room door!... He would write to Lot from the hotel ... that he would certainly not leave him, that he would go abroad with him, but that he could not come back to Ottilie's house, now that Lot was mending, and that he would wait for him in Brussels ... to go south together....