tainty, that we were akin. He was so nice, so straight-forward and so manly; and that rather elderly something appealed to me: I used to look up to it, without being oppressed by it. . . . Gradually, gradually I began to feel that he was far above me. Things I like leave him indifferent: little luxuries, fashion, gaiety, society. That hypnotism of his: at first, I used to think, 'This is something new, a new method;' now, I don't know: I am becoming afraid of it! I am becoming afraid of him! There is something in him that frightens me. . . . Oh, I know, it is only because he is so good and so big and because I feel very small and ordinary, because I don't understand those fine, lofty ideals . . . about doing good and about poor people and about self-sacrifice! . . . To him it all comes natural. He is sacrificing himself now for me: he does not care for the Hague or for his practice here, whereas I could never live at Driebergen again. . . . And, even if I could feel more or less at home among you all . . . even then, even then Addie would oppress me! . . . Do you understand? Oh, you are crying! Of course you are angry with me: you see your son above everything. That is easily understood; and I . . . I still have enough love left for Addie to understand it, to understand it all. . . . But, you see, the love I still have for him . . . is an anxious love, it's a sort of self-reproach that I am as I am and not different, a sort of remorse caused by all kinds of things I don't understand and can't express, things that make me cry when I am by myself and oppress me . . . oppress me, until I sometimes feel as if I were suffocating!"
"Hush, dear: here he is!"
They both ceased and listened. They heard Addie's voice: coming home, he had met the children
