same to him . . . it had suddenly become an abyss . . . pitch-dark . . . because he no longer knew anything. . . . He no longer possessed the instinctive knowledge by which he must tread his path, which, while still so very young, he thought that he knew how to tread in clear self-consciousness of a clear soul that felt its own vocation. Oh, how often of late years had he no longer known! He no longer knew what was right to do, because, whatever he had done of late years, the heaviness had sunk within him, as an insufficiency, giving him that feeling of discouragement. . . . He had felt that discouragement by the bedside of his needy patients. . . . He had felt that discouragement in between his cares for Uncle Gerrit's children. . . . He had felt that discouragement when he was with his wife, with his own children. . . .
Oh, world of feeling born just of the emptiness of self-insufficiency, because self, alas, was never sufficient, because something was always lacking and he did not know what! . . . And, when this came over him, this night of sudden chaos, the word died on his lips, the movement on his fingers, the deed on his will. . . . Oh, world of darkness, which then suddenly spread like the expanse of clouds outside over all the clear sky of himself! . . . He knew he wanted what was right; and yet the insufficiency swelled up. . . . He know his powers of alleviation and consolation; and yet it was the night without a smile . . . as now, when he sat with his hand in his mother's; with no words after their first, save that she shuddered and said:
"Hark . . . hark how the wind is blowing! . . ."
He drew her to him, until her head sank on his shoulder, and they remained like that, in the night.
The gale outside was like a living immensity, a
