contrary, he—Alex—valued in the highest degree all that Uncle, Aunt and Addie did for him: without them, he would never have made any headway in the world and he was making headway at last, he thought. He was now working methodically at Amsterdam and almost methodically making his melancholy yield ground: it was as though Addie inspired him with the love of work and the love of life, wooing to life in him the strength to become a normal member of society, oh, he felt it so clearly! After every talk with Addie he felt it once more, felt strength enough to stay one week in Amsterdam, to work, to live, to see the dreaded life—which his father had escaped by suicide come daily closer and closer, nearer and nearer, like a ghostly vista, at first viewed anxiously and darkly, but later entered, walked into, inevitably, until all the ghostliness of it was close around him. . . . And, when he thought of his father and always saw him lying, in a pool of blood, with his mother's body flung across the corpse in all the terror of despair, then at the same time he would think of Addie and reflect that life, no doubt, would not be gay but that nevertheless it need not always hark back out of black spectral dread to his youth . . . because Addie spoke of being strong and becoming a man gradually. . . . And Guy had gone, had evaded just that beneficial, strengthening influence of Addie! . . . No, Alex also could not understand it; and that evening he remained sitting gloomily between his sisters, not knowing what he could say to comfort his mother. . . . The next day was Sunday; and, if he did not see Addie on Sunday, he knew that the following week would not be a good one for him in Amsterdam, would be a bad, black week. . . .
And it was only Grandmamma and Ernst and
