do for Mamma to stay on at Nice, in an expensive hotel, and that he had better write to her. And the schoolboy had written asking his mother to come back now, telling his mother that that would have to do and that there was no money left. And Constance was coming home that evening.
Van der Welcke was in good spirits all day, perhaps through the after-effects of his dream—he kept seeing those sands before his eyes—and, pedalling along like mad, he sat shaking in his saddle, thinking of that young scamp of his, who ruled over his father and mother. It wasn't right, it was too absurd, soon they would neither of them be able to call their souls their own; but the boy was so sensible and he was always the little peacemaker, who settled everything. Yes, the scamp was the joy of his life; and really, really, except for the boy, everything was unrelieved gloom . . . If only he could buy a motor-car, or at least a motor-cycle. He must find out one day, just ask what a motor-cycle cost . . . But, apart from that, what was there? Especially now that they two—Constance in particular—had wanted at all costs to "rehabilitate" themselves, as Constance called it, in Hague society and now that they had failed utterly through that scene with Van Naghel, things were stodgier than ever . . . with no one to come and see them but Van Vreeswijck, with no outside interests whatever. It was his fault, his fault, his wife kept re-
