She felt as if she were sinking into the snow, into a fleecy, bottomless abyss. Her knees knocked together and he saw that she was giving way. He held her up and she fell against him almost swooning.... He rang the bell....
The door was opened. It was Addie who opened the door. They entered; Constance staggered as she went. And, in her half-swooning giddiness, she seemed to see the house full of whirling snowflakes, coming through the roof, filling the passage and the rooms; and, amid this strange snow, her son's face appeared to her as the face of a ghost, very white, with the blue flame of his big eyes....
At that moment there came from upstairs a wailing cry, a long-drawn-out shriek, uttered in an agony of despair; and that cry seemed to call to Constance out of Adeline's body through all that night of snow indoors and out.
"Mamma, Papa, hush!... Uncle Gerrit ... Uncle Gerrit is ... dead.... Uncle Gerrit has...."
It was snowing, before Constance' giddy eyes, as she went up the stairs, with her husband and her son; it was snowing wildly, a whirl of all-obliterating white; it was snowing all around her. And through it, for the second time, Adeline's long wail of despair rang out loud and shrill....
The rooms upstairs were open.... The maids ... and Marietje in her little nightgown ... were peeping round the doors, trembling.... Gerrit's little room was open ... and on the floor lay the big body, looking bigger still, stretched out like that ... and, beside it, beside the big body, on her knees, the wife ... the small, fair-haired wife.... And her wail of despair rang out for the third time.
"Adeline!"
She now looked round, flung up her arms, felt her sister's arms, Constance' arms, around her:
"He's dead! He's dead!"
"No, Adeline ... perhaps he's fainted."