themselves to exercise restraint in future, so that the boy might not suffer. . . .
Gradually, Constance had talked more and more about Holland, confessed that she was yearning for all those whom she had left behind. She longed for them all: her mother, her brothers, her sisters. She yearned for affection, for family-affection, for the fostering warmth and love and sympathy of a large circle of relations, who would show her the kindness which she had known of old, at Buitenzorg, at the Hague. And Van der Welcke also began to feel that strange nostalgia which urges a man towards the land of his birth, of his own tongue, of his kindred. Weary of living abroad, he fell in with Constance’ view, really because of a chance word from Addie, who also often had the word Holland on his lips; the father was now thinking of his child’s future. . . . But they must first learn how the family would receive them. Van der Welcke wrote to his parents, Constance to Mamma van Lowe. They wrote with all the humility of exiles; once more asked for forgiveness, after those fourteen years; said that they were longing to see their country again, their parents, brothers, sisters, to enjoy the sweet happiness of living where they would be at home. Both had felt the old inviolable bonds drawing them towards Holland, as though there were something which they needed before they could grow old and be a father and mother to their son. . . . Henri’s parents had not yet written, did not at once reply to his question whether they could not forgive him
