e did know
in his soul that longed for certainties: he knew that Mamma had been
married before and was divorced from the husband whom she never
mentioned. Had it been that first husband's fault? Or had she made him
unhappy? Addie did not know and was craving to know. And his longing was
no morbid curiosity, but the result of his unnatural upbringing: his
longing had come about quite naturally, after his first great sorrow,
because his father and mother had both always looked upon him as almost
more than their child, as their comrade, as their consolation, as their
passion, to whom all the current of both their hearts went out. That
Constance should have sobbed in his lap, that Van der Welcke should
worship him as his warmest friend--him, their boy, their little son--had
made his serious soul still more serious and as deep as a small, clear
lake; and it could not be but that, after the first shock and the first
sorrow, questions and longings should arise in him that as yet made no
appeal to other children. His nature was healthy, the nature of a
healthy child's soul, well and peacefully balanced in its early, sturdy
manliness; but his existence between his two parents--it could not be
called an upbringing--had worked on his nerves to the extent of now
making him quiver with the wish to know.

Those were gloomy meals; and Constance asked Van der Welcke why Addie
was so gloomy, so different from what he had been. Now that the boy was
gloomy, with that new, strange and serious gloominess, they both sought
each other more than they had done, talked to each other, calmly,
without angry scenes. Now that the child was still suffering, they both,
together, sought for a solution, how to stop his suffering. And,
helpless in the midst of this entirely new confidence, they looked at
each other as though in despair, because they thought the solution too
terrible. The child wanted to know; and they, both of them, would be
compelled--to stop his suffering, or, perhaps, increase it and feel his
growing contempt and blame pressing upon them--both of them would be
compelled to speak of the years past, of the gigantic mistake of their
lives, the mistake which had given him, their child, his life! Oh, how
they felt it, both of them, that past which never died, sunk in a
bottomless pit, but always haunted them, haunting them more seriously,
more menacingly now that Addie was growing older and had been unhappy
and wanted to know! Oh, how help