with my eyes shut, in a dark night! Have I never had that feeling before, that feeling as if nothing had really existed, as if I had never lived yet, as if I wanted to live once, just once, in my life? . . . But no, it can never be like that, it can't happen like that. No, that sort of thing does not exist. It is just our imagination when we are feeling restless and dissatisfied . . . or when we are tired and feel that we have no energy . . . or whatever it is that makes us more easily affected by all those strange things which we never suspected . . . Why did I not at once laugh and say that, as a child, as a little girl, I myself . . .? No, no, I simply couldn't say it; and it is better that I didn't say it . . . Now I am getting frightened at my own silliness. It is all very well for young people, for a boy and a girl, to have these fancies and even talk of them, in a romantic moment, but at my age it is simply ridiculous . . . It is so long ago, so long ago; and, with all those years in between, it would be ridiculous to refer to poetic dreams and fancies which can only be spoken of when one is very young . . . I sha'n't speak of them . . . and I shall never tell him. Wouldn't it be . . . utterly ridiculous? . . . Yet it does seem . . . it does seem to me that, after those years—when, as Gerrit said, I was a dear little child, playing in the river at Buitenzorg, making up stories about fairies and poetries,[1] decked with
- ↑ Malay fairies.
