seemed endless and the heavy clouds were so oppressive. . . . A cloud of recollection hung over the old woman, as she sat silently staring, as she played with Klaasje, who would never grow up; a last reflexion of sombre tragedy lingered around the simple mother of so many children, as though her husband's suicide still struck her with tragic wonder that life could strike so suddenly and fiercely and cruelly; it was as though a strange psychological secret slumbered in the sad eyes of Emilie, who was still a young woman; a secret which she would never speak. . . .
Sombre was the house and sombre the everlasting wind that blew around it; full of strange voices, of things of long ago; and they did not brighten the house, those three sad, silent women, so different in age, so sombre in their equal melancholy. They did not brighten the morning which they spent there together, in the house on the long, rain-swept road; and it was Constance herself, followed quietly by Marietje or Adeletje, who woke the house, stairs and passages to life with her active footfall and the shrill rattle of her keys. . . . The sound of a piano came harshly from Mathilde's sitting-room upstairs; and it had only to be heard to make the other piano in the drawing-room downstairs cry out in pain under Gerdy's furious little fingers, until Constance was startled at so much noise and hurriedly whispered to Marietje:
"Do tell Gerdy not to play when Mathilde is playing upstairs! . . ."
Marietje would then rush to the drawing-room and rebuke Gerdy; and, because it was Aunt Constance' request, Gerdy's piano suddenly fell silenced, leaving Mathilde's runs and flourishes to triumph overhead.
The children drove out daily with their nurse in
