Klaasje who did not feel oppressed by the sombre, sudden, incomprehensible and unexpected event which the others were all trying to understand and explain: to them the summer day had been all sunlight and the gloom had passed unperceived by them.
Next morning Addie returned. Constance, who was quite unstrung, had been twice and three times to the station in vain. At last she saw him:
"You didn't find him?" she asked, with conviction.
"Yes, I did."
"What? You found him? How? How was it possible?"
"I had an idea that he couldn't go farther than Rotterdam: he hadn't much money on him. I hunted and hunted until I found him."
"And you haven't brought him back with you!"
"No, I let him go."
"You let him go?"
"I think it's best: he was very anxious to go. He was angry at my finding him. I talked to him for a long time. He said that he wished to be under no more obligations, fond though he was of us, grateful though he felt. . . ."
Constance, trembling, had taken Addie's arm; they went home on foot; the road lay in a bath of summer under the trees.
"He spoke sensibly. He had a vague idea of working his passage on a steamer as a sailor or stoker. I took a ticket for him. He will write to us regularly. I told him that Mr. Brauws, if he liked, could certainly give him some introductions in New York. He said he would see. He showed a certain decision, as if he were doing violence to something in his own character. It was rather strange. . . . I thought that I ought not to compel him to come back. He told me that he was certain
