Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/286

280 "Yes, I know you do. But he doesn't make you happy."

She was silent. She did not wish to go on and say that she felt Addie so far above her, unattained and incomprehensible, that everything was coming to escape her, that her love was escaping her, that she felt herself sinking slowly, slowly, in a vague abyss, that it was only the children who made her find Addie again, every day, for a moment. She was silent. But there were tears in her eyes. Her healthy temperament, now slightly unnerved, had a need of much happiness for itself, even as a healthy plant needs much air and much water and does not know what it means to pine. The melancholy that sometimes overcame her was not native to her.

"Let's take the tram," she said. "I feel tired."

"It's better for you to walk," he said.

His voice was authoritative; and she allowed herself to be coerced: it was a hot afternoon and she dragged herself along mechanically beside him, both carrying their own rackets.

"Mamma's quite right, Johan," she said, abruptly. "It won't do for us to see each other so often, for me to talk to you so . . . intimately."

"And why not, if you feel unhappy, if you want to unburden yourself to me?"

"No, no, it doesn't do. . . . Come, let's take the tram: we shall be too late for our tennis."

He looked out mechanically for the tram. They were at the corner of the Waalsdorp road; and he said:

"Look here, walk a little way with me. I don't feel like tennis. Do you?"

She let herself be dragged along and turned down the lonely, green road. She seemed to surrender feebly to his wishes; and she became aware that she was in a profound state of melancholy, a hesitation