now told her. She kept calm. She first tried to gloss things over, in
a spirit of contradiction; but she was overcome with a deep sense of
depression when she thought of her boy and his trouble. For one
torturing moment, she doubted whether she had not been very wrong to
return to her native land, to her native town, in the midst of all her
relations. But she merely said:

"Slander ... that appears to be people's occupation everywhere...."

Now that she seemed calm, he resolved to tell her everything and said
that he had been to the Van Saetzemas and threatened Jaap.

Her temper was roused, for a moment, but subsided again in the profound
depression that immediately left her numb and disheartened. The
torturing pain followed again and the doubt whether she had not been
quite wrong....

But she did not give utterance to the doubt and simply went to the
"turret-room," where her boy was:

"Are you going out, Addie?" she asked, vaguely, calm amid her
depression.

"Let's go out together, Mamma," he said.

She smiled, glad that he was giving her this Sunday afternoon with that
justice with which he divided his favours. She stood in front of him,
with blank eyes to which the tears now stole, but with the smile still
playing about her mouth.

"Shall we, Mamma?"

She nodded yes. Then she knelt down beside her boy, where he sat with
his book in his hands, and it was as though she were making herself very
small, as though she were shrinking; and she laid her head on his little
knees and put one arm round him. She wept very softly into his lap.

"Come, Mummy, what's the matter?"

She now knew what he had suffered, a sorrow almost too great for one of
his years to bear. She almost wished to beg his pardon, but dared not.
She only said:

"Addie, you did believe Papa, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you believe me too, when I say that it's not true what people
say?..."

"Yes, I believe you."

He believed her; and yet a suspicion lingered in his mind. There was
something, even though that particular thing was not true. There was
something. But he did not ask what it was, out of respect for those past
years, the years that were his parents' own.

"My child!" she sobbed, with her head still in his lap. "Tell me, has my
boy been very unhappy?"

He just nodded, to say yes, and pressed her to him, lifted her up, took
her close to him on his knees, with the caress of an embryo man. She
closed her eyes on her son's breast.