“And the other fellows licked Jaap because he said it. And then Jaap also said . . .”
“Well, what else did Jaap say, old man?”
“That I . . . that I was not the son of my father.”
Suddenly, while he was unbosoming himself in the warmth of Frans’ sympathy, a light flashed across him. He remembered the mysterious fits of sadness of Mamma’s, scenes with Papa, during those early days at the Hague, when he had vaguely noticed in his mother something as though she were asking for forgiveness, humbling herself before Grandmamma, before the uncles and aunts. And all this, taken in connection with Papa and Mamma’s former residence in Italy, in Rome, caused to flicker before him as it were a reflection of cruel truths. As he looked at Frans, these cruel truths flickered up before him again. He had read much for his years; his school, his school-friends had soon revealed some of the mysteries of life to him, though he was still a boy, though he was still a child, with a child’s innocence in his soul and his eyes, with the soft bloom of that innocence on his child’s skin and his child’s mind, even though there was something of a little man about him. And, suddenly, he saw everything: the rage of the boys because Jaap had given himself away, their confusion and now Frans’ confusion. . . .
“Not the son of your father?” repeated Frans. “They’re asses, those three louts. . . . Come, Addie, don’t have anything more to do with those clod-
