self was just the same as the others. And she thought herself and all of them small, so small that she said to herself:
"Do we all of us live for so very little, when there is so very much beyond, stretching far and wide, under the cloudy skies of that immense horizon? Do we never stop outside this little circle in which we all, with our superior smile—because we are so distinguished and enlightened—spin round one another and ourselves, like humming-tops, like everlasting humming-tops?"
And again Brauws' figure rose before her eyes. Oh, she now for the first time understood what he had said, on that first evening when she saw and heard him, about Peace! . . . Peace! The pure, immaculate ideal suddenly streamed before her like a silver banner, fluttered in the wide cloudy skies! Oh, she now for the first time understood . . . why he sought. He had wanted to seek . . . life! He had sought . . . and he had not found. But, while seeking, he had lived: he still lived! His breath came and went, his pulses throbbed, his chest heaved . . . even though his sadness, because he had never "found," bedimmed his energies. But she and all of them did not live! They did not live, they had never lived. They were born, people of distinction, with all their little cynicisms about money and religion, with all their fondness for birth and position; and they continued to spin round like that, to
