speak to Van der Welcke the next morning, in quite an ordinary way. But, when she saw him for a moment before he went out, he seemed to her to be suppressing some secret grief deep down in himself: his blue boyish eyes were overcast, his mouth half-sulking, as on rainy days when he was not able to go cycling; and yet it was fine now, a fine autumn day, and he came down in his cycling-suit, fetched his bicycle, said that he was going a long way, that he would perhaps not be back for lunch. She suspected in him a craving to get away, as fast as possible and as far as possible, and to deaden with that wild speed the pain of his gnawing grief. But, in the soft glow of her new youth, which illuminated everything within her and around her, she had not the heart to tell him what she was going to do, what she had promised to do, though in her secret self she thought it dishonest not to tell him straight out. So she said nothing, let him go. She looked after him for a moment, watched the angry curve of his shoulders, as he pedalled desperately, in his mad craving to get away, far away.
She sighed, felt sorry for him, she no longer knew why or wherefore . . . But she had promised Van Vreeswijck; and perhaps, she thought, it would be best so. She went out therefore, took the tram to the Bezuidenhout, rang at Bertha's door, found her at home. In the hall, the removers' men were busy packing china and glass in big cases. Louise and
