always played together. Yes, Bertha had been married a year or two, while we were still children. Is Bertha fifty yet? She’s quite grey! I’m going grey myself! . . . Dear Bertha! . . . And Louis and Gertrude, who died at Buitenzorg. . . . Do you remember, Karel? It was we three who were always together. You used to carry me over the water on your back. How naughty we were! I was quite thirteen or fourteen, at that time. . . . And things are so funny, in India: next year, I was in long frocks and going to the balls. . . . I thought it delightful, all that grandeur: the aides-de-camp; the national anthem wherever we went: I used to imagine that they played it for me, the viceroy’s little daughter! . . . Yes, Van Naghel was at the bar then, at Semarang; Bertha didn’t come in for any of it. . . . Oh, it’s past now, my vanity! That shows you how a person changes. You are changed, too, Karel: you have become so sedate, so dignified. What a pity you are no longer a burgomaster: you’re cut out for it, Karel!”
She tried to speak lightly, suddenly feeling that she was talking too much about herself, letting herself go, while Karel and Cateau sat staring at her. And yet she cared for them: was not Karel her brother, who had always been bracketed with Gerrit in her childhood memories, and was not Cateau his wife, though she had not a sympathetic face, with those great round eyes of hers? Were they not members of the family, for which she had longed so? She tried to speak playfully, after her all-too-spon-
