"Ottilie, you must think about it calmly.... We have grown so very old.... You must think about it calmly, as I think about it.... You have always been too fanciful ..."
His voice sounded in entreaty, very different from its usual airy geniality.
"It was after that in particular that I became full of fancies. No, I have never been able to think about it calmly! At first I was afraid of people, then of myself: I thought I should go mad!... Now, now that it is approaching ... I am afraid of God!"
"Ottilie!"
"It has been a long, long, long martyrdom.... O God, can it be that this life is not enough?"
"Ottilie, we should not have grown so very old—you ... and I ... and Roelofsz—if God ... and he also had not forgiven us."
"Then why did he so often ... come and stand there! Oh, he stood there so often! He just stared, pale, with dark, sunken eyes, eyes like two fiery daggers: like that!..."
And she pointed the two slender, wand-like fore-fingers straight in front of her.
"I ... I am calm, Ottilie. And, if we are punished afterwards, after our death, we must endure it. And, if we endure it ... we shall receive mercy."
"I wish I were a Catholic. I thought for a long time of becoming a Catholic. Thérèse was quite right to become a Catholic.... Oh, why do I never see her now? Shall I ever see her again? I hope so. I hope so.... If I had been a Catholic, I should have confessed ..."