He stuffed the envelope into his pocket, went off. Brrr! It lay on his chest like a plank.... Where could she be gone to? Where was Pauline gone to? Had she gone out of town?... Why hadn't he simply left the envelope? Well, you never knew: if she didn't come back, it would be there, with the photograph of his children.... She'd probably cleared out.... Yes, she had probably cleared out ... with her rich young fellow.... Well, he, whoever he was, wouldn't remember her as he remembered her in the old days.... Brrrrrr!... Lord, Lord, how he was shivering!... Oh, to be in bed!... When could Constance and Van der Welcke be back?... Oh, the express!... Oh, the coffin!... Oh, the fiery lick of the dragon, whose great, hairy body filled the whole grey sky with its wriggling!...
He turned down the Javastraat: he wanted to hurry home; his teeth were chattering; he felt as if ice-cold water was dripping from him, while the confounded brute sucked his marrow with long, fiery licks of its tongue. Near the Schelpkade, he met a little group of four or five policemen: rough words sounded loud; their words sounded so loud through the unreality of the mist that they woke him out of a walking sleep, out of his dream of the dragon-beast with the stiff bristles:
"She was quite blue," he heard one of them say. They were striding along, talking loudly, as if something startling had happened. Gerrit suddenly stood rooted to the ground:
"Who was blue?" he asked, in a hoarse bellow.
The policeman saluted:
"Sir?"
"Who was blue?" bellowed Gerrit.
"A woman, sir.... A woman who drowned herself, last night, in the Kanaal...."
"A woman?"
"Yes, sir. My mate here was the first to see the body, when it was floating with the face out of the water. Then he came and told me; and we went and fetched the drag. It was a young woman...."