immediately afterwards, after that reminiscence. But in him, Brauws, the reminiscence had lingered, as though always visible: the picture shining in the tenderness with which the brother had spoken of his sister; and it seemed to him as though he himself had seen, but more vaguely and dimly, once in his life, on those Dutch horizons of his childhood, a blur like that of the little figure, the bright, fair-faced child, even the little red note of her flowers. . . . Oh, how vague it was, how visionary! You thought of it . . . and it had gone, all of it, leaving hardly the memory of a perfume, nay, hardly the reflection of a memory! Really, it was nothing, nothing, too airy for thought and impossible to describe in words, however tenderly chosen. It was nothing: if he thought about it for more than the one second that the reflection flashed across him, it was gone, quite lost. . . .
He was feeling very lonely now. . . . Oh, to think of the passing years with their millions of meetings, so many men and women just brushing against one another, in that casual passing, just looking into one another's eyes, with the indifferent look of non-recognition, and then passing one another again, never seeing one another after! . . . And perhaps among them the one had passed, her eyes looking indifferently into his eyes, a bit of her body or dress brushing against his body or dress . . . and she was gone, gone, lost altogether forever. Was that how it had happened in his life? Or not? Was
