"No, no . . . I don't want to come back again."
"Will you always remain at Driebergen?"
"Yes, I think so."
"You have found happiness there, I did not. I remained a stranger."
"Tilly . . . one day, perhaps . . . you will live there as we do now . . . when we are no longer there. . . ."
"No, never."
"Why not?"
"I dislike the house and everything in it . . . down to the very doorposts. And I can't get used to an eerie house . . . as you all do."
"But Addie . . ."
"Exactly: he will never forget the house. What can it be to him? He was not born there!"
"He feels at home there."
"Just so. And I do not. . . . Oh, I ought never to have married him!"
"Tilly, Tilly, what are you saying?"
"I ought never, never to have married him!"
"And you love him, you love him!"
"I have loved him, oh, very dearly. But he is far above me! I do not reach his level! He sacrifices himself for me. And it breaks my heart to accept his sacrifice. It oppresses me! Oh, Mamma, find something, find something for us! Let him go back to you all . . . and let me stay here with the children. . . . I shall live simply . . . in a small upper part . . . and practise economy. It is all my fault, not his. He is good and kind and magnanimous . . . but all that oppresses me. I thought at first that we were—how shall I put it?—akin to each other, kindred natures. When we got married, I used not to think about such things . . . but I thought in myself, with an unconscious cer-
