enough for me to sit and look at him working. Constance doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks we are sitting apart, each in his own room. . . . How can the boy stick it, working so long on end? What is he working at? Greek? Yes, Greek: I can see the letters. I always used to get up a hundred times: a fly was enough to put me off; and I never really studied: I just crammed, prepared for my examination in a fortnight, helped by Max Brauws. . . . Brauws! What’s become of that chap, I wonder? Oh, one’s old friends! . . . I simply could not study. Without Max Brauws, I should never have got there. . . . Yes, what’s become of him? . . . But this beggar studies so peacefully, so industriously. He’s a dear boy. . . . Oh, if he only had more young people about him, bright, cheerful youngsters! If only it doesn’t do him harm later: this gloomy boyhood between parents who are always squabbling. . . . I restrain myself sometimes, for his sake. But it’s no use, no use. . . . Heavens, how the fellow’s working! I think I’ll just ask him something. Or no, perhaps I’d better not: he always puckers up his forehead so solemnly, as though I were the child, disturbing him, and he the father. . . . Well, I’d better have another cigarette. . . .”
And Van der Welcke, through the clouds of his fourth cigarette, watched his son’s back. In the light of the lamp on the table, the boy’s curly young head bent over his books and exercises as fervently as though the Greek verbs were the world’s salva-
