“Don’t make a scene.”
“I sha’n’t make a scene; but let me speak to Van Naghel. I see your husband is getting up: he has finished playing. Tell him I want to speak to him. Let Van der Welcke be present at our conversation. Paul, you must be there too. . . .”
“But, Constance, why, why speak to him? I am so afraid Mamma will notice . . .”
“No, Mamma will see nothing. I want to give her as little pain as possible. But I must speak to your husband, in your presence and Van der Welcke’s. I must, Bertha, and I will. Call your husband. And we’ll go into the boudoir.”
She rose, trembling. She was shaking all over; and, as she almost fell where she stood, a sudden thought arose in her and paralyzed all her energies:
“Why am I talking like this, thinking like this, wishing this? How small I am, how small my conduct is! Really, what does it all matter: people; and what they think; and what they write and say? Is that life? Is that all? Is there nothing else? . . .”
But another thought gave her fresh zest, fresh courage. She remembered the conversation which she had had with her husband a little while ago, she remembered his reproach that she was not thinking of her son, that she was doing nothing for her son, that she would let herself take root in the shade, continue to vegetate, in her disgrace, in her corner, withdrawn into herself, in her own rooms, would continue to sit “cursing her luck” in her Kerkho-
