and mantelpieces. Dead was the old family-doctor; as good as dead her two old sisters; dead was Van Naghel; as good as dead Bertha, now so far away. Aunt Lot, she still remained, she still remained, bearing up bravely, in spite of financial disaster. . . . Then the children: they were all dying off, for surely it was tantamount to that, when they were becoming more and more remote from her: Karel; Adolphine; Ernst; even Paul; and Dorine, her youngest. There was only Constance . . . and Gerrit, perhaps. . . . And the grandchildren: Frans, in Java; Emilie and Henri, in Paris: O God, what were they doing in Paris? O God, what was it, what was the matter with them? For she suddenly saw the boy . . . white as a corpse . . . with his clothes open . . . and a deep, gaping wound above his heart, sending a stream of purple blood from his lung . . . while he lay in the last agonies of death. . . . Why did she see it, this strange vision of a second or two? It couldn't be true, yet it filled her with anxiety. . . . And in sad understanding she nodded her old head, with the dim eyes which were suddenly seeing visions more clearly than reality . . . until the time when they would see nothing, numbed by the years which were slowly accumulating about her. . . . Why did she see it? . . . And, amid the emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing-room, a sort of roar came to her from the distance, from the distance outside the
