And she wrung her hands, feeling that the past was now doomed to remain for ever and that to think anything else was to invite disillusion. Oh, the past, which not only remained, which not only would cling to them for ever, but which grew, grew with the child, as though the sorrow of that past would always blossom anew, again and again, with perennial grief and woe! Oh, the indestructible sorrow, which always came back to haunt them, even though it seemed to have died, sunk in a bottomless pit, the abyss of past years! Until, at last, as in a cry for help in the helplessness that pressed and bore upon her more fiercely from day to day, clutching at her throat, inexorably demanding a decision, she made that decision and wailed:
"Tell him! Tell him! Tell him!"
And, as she uttered that wail, he saw her so prostrate under the decision that would bring down upon her the scorn, the rage perhaps, of their child, of their son, the death—O Heaven!—of his love, if he once knew and, above all, realized the truth, that he, her husband, felt pity for the woman who had turned his life into a long and dreary futility; and he said:
"I will tell him, I will tell him. But have no fear: if he does understand and realize it, he will love you none the less for it, Constance!"
She looked at him, feeling that he no longer grudged her their child's love, that he was not as jealous as she. And, for a moment, she thought of throwing herself on his breast and sobbing out the anguish which she felt pressing more and more upon her, felt coming towards her like a monster looming out of the future. But the emotion tugging at her heart-strings was drawn back violently; and she went away and flung herself on the floor in her bedroom and hiccoughed her despair ... because her son was going to be told!
CHAPTER XXXII
But he did not tell him that day. He merely persuaded himself that it was not necessary, that it would even be wrong to tell his son, his child, who was still so young, the past of their lives, that which he would hear of himself and know and understand when he was a year or two older. And on the following days also, hesitating, Van der Welcke did not tell him. But the gloomy meals continued, Constance' fits of helplessness continued; and she once again exclaimed:
"Oh, tell him! Do tell him!"
And they both felt so unhappy, because they were losing their child more and more every day, that he determined to tell Addie. He hesitated until the last moment, wavering, struggling within himself, not knowing what would be right, what wrong, knowing only that he was suffering beyond endurance. Then, one evening, he looked up his child in the "turret-room:"