“Nothing.... Very well, Addie.... Tell Papa that it shall be as he says, that I am quite content ... that I could not do without you either ... for six months!”
She looked at him, looked into his serious blue eyes, as though she had forgotten him and were now remembering him for the first time. Six months ... six months without him! The new life, the new paths, the new cities, on those far-off, new horizons ... and six months ... six months without Addie!...
Had she then been dreaming? Had she just been dazzled by that glittering vision? Was it just intoxication, ecstasy? Was it just glamour and enchantment?...
He left her. She dressed and went downstairs.
She felt as if she were back from a long journey and seeing her house again after an absence of months. Her movements were almost like those of a sleep-walker; the house seemed something remote and impersonal, though she had always loved it, looked after it, made it her beautiful home by a thousand intimate touches. She now went through the house mechanically performing her usual little housewifely duties, still half dreaming, in a condition of semi-consciousness. It was as if her thoughts were standing still, as if she no longer knew, nor for that matter thought, remembering only the night before, that lonely evening of inward conviction.... The morning had dawned, placid, with its cloudless sky; Addie had come: she now knew what Henri thought. It surprised her just a little that Henri thought like that ... and then she realized that, after all, he did not love Marianne very much ... that he must love her less than Addie. Poor Marianne, she thought; and she reflected that women love more absolutely than men.... She spoke to the servant, gave her orders, did all the actual, everyday things, in between her thoughts. And suddenly she looked deep down into herself, once more saw so completely into her own clear depths that she was startled at herself and shuddered. She saw that, if Henri had made the same proposal to her that she had made to him, she would have accepted it in her desire for happiness, for happiness with the man whom she loved and who—she felt it!—loved her. She saw that she would have accepted and that she would not have hesitated because of her son!... Her son! He was certain to be leaving them soon in any case ... to seek his own life!... Her son! To provide him for a few years more with the paternal house, that wretched fabric of lies, which he, the boy, alone kept together ... for his sake and for the sake of that joint falsehood, she would have to reject the new life of truth!... It was as if she were standing in a maze; but she was certain that she would not have hesitated in that maze, if the decision had been left to her ... that she would have known how to take the path of simple honesty ... that she would have elected to separate, in spite of Addie ... that she loved her new life—and the stranger—more than her child!
She had learnt to know herself in that new atmosphere of pure truth; and now ... now she saw so far into those translucent depths that she was frightened and shuddered as in the presence of something monstrous; for it seemed monstrous to her to place anything above her child, above the dear solace of so many years....
Just then Van der Welcke came home; she heard him put away his bicycle, go up the stairs ... and then turn back, as if reflecting that he could no longer avoid his wife. He entered, abruptly. She, trembling, had sat down, because she felt on the verge of falling....
“Has Addie told you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.