in his patients, to share his life in them? But she was jealous of those patients, who took Addie from her for hours and days together; and she was jealous, very jealous of Marietje. . . . But what then? How was she to win him? . . . And in this rich-blooded woman, whose senses bloomed purple and fierce, there shot up as with a riot of red roses the thought of winning him more and yet more with her kisses, with her whole body, with all that she would give him, with all that she would find for him, to wind tendrils round him and bind him to her for ever and for ever. . . . And then, then also to make him jealous of her, as she was jealous of him, by disturbing his unruffled calm, the calm of a young, powerful man, with painful suspicions, which would yet bring him wholly to her, so that she might win him entirely. . . .
Oh, wasn't it awful, wasn't it awful? As it was, she sat here the livelong day and possessed her husband only in the evening, only at night, as though she were food for nothing else. It went against the grain; and suddenly, intuitively, she felt her jealousy of Addie's long talks with Marietje more sharply than before. What need had he to talk to her at such length? Oh, he ought not to neglect his wife so, he ought not to think her good only for that: he ought to talk to her also, for hours at a time, earnestly, strangely, gazing into her eyes, as he talked to Marietje! Why did he not talk to her, his wife, like that? What were these talks? What had those two to talk about? It was not only about being ill and about medicines and not even only about hypnotism: of that she was convinced. There existed between the two of them secret things, about which they talked, things which they two alone knew. . . . Oh, how she felt her husband escape her, as though she were stretching out
