your authority and protect me a little and defend me against mean and petty slanders? If you show some magnanimity and help me to make people . . . to make people forget what I did fifteen, fifteen years ago, they will drop their slanders; and I shall be rehabilitated, in your house, Van Naghel, just because of your high position and the consideration which you enjoy and your many connections and your power to carry out what you set your mind on. Van Naghel, if only you would help me: if not for my own sake, for my son’s! It’s to help him, later, in his career, which he will take up at his father’s wish and his grandparents’: the same career as his father’s, which I ruined. I am asking so little of you, Van Naghel; and because you are you, it means so little for you to consent to my request. Van Naghel, Papa helped you, in the old days: I ask you now to help me, his child and your wife’s sister. Let me come to Bertha’s receptions. You know Mrs. van Eilenburgh: help me to prepare people for my intention—which they were really the first to suggest—to be presented at Court; and ask us, this winter, once, just once, to one of your official dinners.”
She stood before her brother-in-law, pale and trembling, almost like a supplicant; and, while she besought him, the thought flashed through her mind:
“What am I begging for? How base and small I am making myself: dear God, how terribly small! And is that, seriously, life? Is that the only life? Or is there something else? . . .”
