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124 pray here. . . and especially for the old man. And the thought that she herself did not go troubled her so greatly that, very occasionally, she accompanied the girls, though she continued insensible to any impression derived from liturgical religion. And the things of the past that flickered and hovered and formed the intangible atmosphere of the dark passages and the rich-brown rooms, in which the only gay note was struck by the blue-and-white of the Delft pots and jars: those things of the past all unconsciously harmonized with the mood only of Van der Welcke, because something of his childhood was wafted and reflected in them, and of Addie, because of his vague sense of inheriting not only the material but also the immaterial things with which the big house remained filled. Though he felt a stranger to the old man, he felt related to the old woman, with a strange retrospect of what he knew of her and remembered of her later, silent, mystic years, when liturgical piety was not enough to satisfy her.

But for the rest the house remained as it were one great hospitality, though alien in blood to so many who had found a shelter in it and a sanctuary: the old, doting woman at the window, peering out at the snow-grey garden-vistas; the mourning and still young mother, with her grown-up children; and Emilie, full of silent mystery. And, the other day, in a drifting blizzard, Constance had brought home Marietje van Saetzema—Mary, as they decided to call her—and they had given her Guy's room, now that Guy worked in a corner of Addie's study, where he heaped up his books on a little table. The house gradually became very full. The daughter-in-law also remained alien to the big house; but the children, Constance and Jetje, were always like golden sunbeams, sometimes whirling in a sound of yet