Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/86

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DR. ADRIAAN

developed in him later, there had always remained the fear in that darkness, because the unconscious life went on daily . . . and because his father—why, why?—had torn himself out of the unconscious life and committed suicide. . . . That—though Alex had not spoken—was how Addie diagnosed him, that was how he really diagnosed his state, with that strange look of penetration, with that strange vision. . . . And, when he looked into another in this way, he no longer thought of himself, his self-insufficiency fell away from him and he seemed to know on the other's behalf, to know surely and positively, to know with instinctive knowledge . . . as he never knew things for himself. . . .

While they walked on, arm in arm, he thought that the boy's heavy step was becoming more rhythmical and even, that his answers—now that they went on talking about Amsterdam and the master in whose house he would be—were becoming firmer, as though he were taking greater interest. . . . There was no note of doubt in Addie's voice: his voice made the two years' schooling at Amsterdam, the whole subsequent life as a busy, hardworking man, stand out clear in the mist that hung under the trees and over the roads, made it all take on bright colours as a life spreading open with unclouded horizons of human destiny, as though all the unconscious life would run easily along ordered lines. . . . He himself had never known that fear of the days to come, because he had seen his goal before him in the future. Yet why, then, that morbid sense of insufficiency? . . .

He refused to think of it; and at once it passed from him like a ghost. Even after his sleepless night, he now felt the energy circulating strongly within him, felt the magic pouring out of him as