Constance laughed and stretched herself out on her sofa, glad to be home. Van der Welcke left the room with his photograph, Truitje with her work-box.
“Come here, Addie. Papa has had you for seven weeks. Now you belong to me ... for an indefinite period.”
She drew him down beside her, took his hands. It struck him that she looked tired, more like her years, not like her photograph; and, his mind travelling swiftly to his father, he thought his father so young, outwardly a young man and inwardly sometimes a child: Ottocar in a motor-car....
“It’s strange, Addie,” she said, softly, “that you are only fourteen: you always seem to me at least twenty. And I think it strange also that I should have such a big son. So everything is strange. And your mother herself, my boy, is the strangest of all. If you ask me honestly if I like being ‘vain,’ I mean, taking part in social frivolities, I shouldn’t know what to answer. I certainly used to enjoy it in the old days; and, a fortnight ago, I admit I looked upon it as a sort of youth that comes over one again; but really it all means nothing: just a little brilliancy; and then you feel so tired and empty ... and so discontented....”
She stopped suddenly, not caring to say more, and looked at the photograph, now lying on a table beside her. It made her laugh again; and at the same time a tear trembled on her lashes. And she did not know if it gave her a peaceful feeling to be growing old ... or if she regretted it. It was as though the sun of Nice had imbued her with a strange, dull melancholy which she herself did not understand.
“To live!” she thought. “I have never lived. I would so gladly live once ... just once. To live! But not like this ... in a dress that cost six hundred francs. I know that, I know all about it: it is just a momentary brilliancy and then nothing.... To live! I should like to live ... really ... truly. There must be something. But it is a mad wish. I am too old. I am growing old, I am becoming an old woman.... To live! I have never lived ... I have been in the world, as a woman of the world; I spoilt that life; then I hid myself.... I was so anxious to come back to my country and my family; and it all meant nothing but a little show and illusion ... and a great deal of disappointment. And so the days were wasted, one after the other, and I ... have ... never ... lived.... Just as I throw away my money, so I have thrown away my days. Perhaps I have squandered all my days ... for nothing. Oh, I oughtn’t to feel like this! What does it mean when I do? What am I regretting? What is there left for me? At Nice, I thought for a moment of joining in that feminine revolt against approaching age; and I did join in it; and I succeeded. But what does it all mean and what is the use of it? It only means shining a little longer, for nothing; but it does not mean living.... But to long for it doesn’t mean anything either, for there is nothing for me now but to grow old, in my home; and, even if I am not exactly among my people, my brothers and sisters, at any rate I have my mother ... and, perhaps for quite a long time still, my son too....”
“Mummy ... what are you thinking about so deeply?”
But she smiled, said nothing, looked earnestly at him:
“He’s much fonder of his father,” she thought. “I know it, but it can’t be helped. I must put up with it and accept what he gives me.”
“Come, Mummy, what are you thinking about?”