hand. He talked to it; and it shook its pointed ears, as though it understood, as though it answered with a graceful movement of its neck and head. And, while he let the horse go at a foot's pace, with the reins held loose in his hand, he thought how lonely it had all become, now that the twilight was deepening around them. In bright flashes he thought just once more of his childhood, out there: Buitenzorg; the white palace; the delicious garden, unique of its kind and world-famous, with its precious trees, its clustering palms, its giant ferns, its strange, huge giant creepers with stems as thick as pythons slung from tree to tree. . . . And, behind it, the river . . . where he used to play with Karel and Constance. . . . Oh, how vivid it all was! To think of it almost brought the tears to his eyes, now that the twilight was gathering round him and these memories were but the last reflection of those sunny days when they were all children together! . . . It had begun very slowly, slowly but irrevocably: the gradual separation and drifting apart, the ties loosened until they were all detached . . . now, just now, in the sombre twilight that was drawing nigh. . . . Slowly, slowly, with every year in which the brothers and sisters grew bigger and older, in which they developed from children into persons who themselves drew a circle around them, their own circle of marriage, their own circle of children, of which they themselves were now the
