else sees and hears and feels, that he's mad . . . whereas it's you yourselves who are mad. I shall stay here; I won't go to Nunspeet."
But suddenly he grew alarmed and asked:
"I say, Constance, you won't force me, surely? You won't beat me? That beastly cad down below, that fellow, that cad: he hit me . . . and woke them . . . and trod on them! He stood treading on them, the great fool, the blockhead! . . . Tell me, Constance, you will leave me here, won't you?"
"No, Ernst, no one wants to force you. But it would be a good thing if you went to Nunspeet."
"But why? I'm all right here."
"You would be among kind people . . . who will be fond of you."
"No one has ever been fond of me," he said.
"Ernst!" she cried, with a sob.
"No one has ever been fond of me," he repeated, bluntly. "Not Mamma . . . nor any of you . . . not one. If I had not had all of them . . . oh, if I had not had all of them! My darlings, my darlings! Oh, what can be the matter with them? Now they're waking up! Now they're awake! Oh, listen to them moaning! Oh dear, listen to them screaming! They're screaming, they're yelling! . . . Is it purgatory? Oh, dear, how they're crowding round me! They're stifling me, they're
