"Your nerves have been all wrong for some time. . . . You often cry . . . about nothing."
"Yes. I don't know why. . . . It's nothing. . . . It's the weather. . . ."
"Yes . . . our Dutch climate. . . . Now at last it's something like winter. It's freezing like anything. The snow is crisp underfoot."
She slipped again. He held her up and they walked close together, in the driving snow, which blinded them. . . .
"I must say, it's absurd of Mamma . . . to send us out in this weather. . . ."
She did not answer: she understood that he thought it absurd. The cold took her breath away; and it seemed to her, as she kept on slipping, that they would never reach the Bankastraat. . . . At last they turned the corner of the Nassauplein. And she calculated: not quite ten minutes more; then a moment with Gerrit and Adeline; the cab would fetch them there; then back to Mamma's with Addie . . . to set Mamma's mind at ease. And, as she reckoned it out, she grew calmer and thought, with Henri, that it was certainly rather absurd of Mamma. She planted her feet more firmly; she was now walking more briskly, still holding her husband's arm. . . . Was it the cold or what, that made her keep on trembling with an icy shiver? . . . Now, at last, they were nearing the Bankastraat and Gerrit's house; and it seemed to
