known for certain that he was their comfort . . . He knew it then, as child and boy—no longer in unconsciousness but in assured, unshakable knowledge—and then it had become his destiny. So very early it had dawned on his consciousness and afterwards glittered before his eyes:
"I must help them, I must be to him and to her what is dear to them and what comforts them."
So naturally had he taken that destiny upon his young shoulders that it never became too heavy for him; and there had grown up with him an inclination to comfort and alleviate those who were not quite so near to him. Quite naturally he had spread his wing over all Uncle Gerrit's children, to care for them, to bring them up. Quite naturally, he sought what he could find to alleviate and comfort, whom he could cure, whom he could care for . . . and this farther still from him, not close to his home, but in outlying villages and distant towns. . . . Thus had his nature grown and thus did he act, naturally, in obedience to his nature. . . . But the conflict between his parents, coming immediately, in the first, unconscious years of childhood, had made his tender nerves tremble with an incessant thrill, like a stringed instrument that is never silent. . . . And under the calm, earnest glance, under the laugh of comfort or composure, under the sturdy breadth of his young and manly strength, the strings had always vibrated and never consented to betray themselves. . . . They had betrayed themselves once, once only, when his very earliest childish pain had given him a violent shock, in a despair too great to be borne. . . . But immediately afterwards he had known within himself that he must be strong to overcome the cruelties of life. . . . Since then the cruelties had blown against him, like piercing winds . . . without causing the sensitive strings to
