VII.
After these scenes Kehlmark often reproached himself. "Never will anybody love me whole-heartedly like this woman," he said arguing with himself. And he recalled their first intimacy in the grandmother's house. He had always been her oracle, her god. She was his advocate with the Dowager, palliated his follies, and obtained for him money which he needed. Where would he meet with such devotion and faithfulness again? Did she not now even go the length of tolerating his passion for young Govaertz?
Then, at the height of his good dispositions, a complete reaction would take place. For a word, a look, an intonation of voice, for anything he thought he noticed of severity, or disapproval in her face, he began again to suspect and even to detest her, seeing only in her devotion a diseased, inquisitorial curiosity, a refinement of ven-
