Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/301

Rh the words; he recognized the leisurely forms. It was Johan Erzeele and Mathilde.

They did not see him. They walked on very slowly and Addie followed behind them. Johan seemed to be persistently pleading, Mathilde seemed to be refusing something. Addie's heart beat fearfully as he followed after them; and a jealousy suddenly flared up amid his dull dejection. Was she not his wife, was she not his wife? And why, lately, was she always looking for Johan and he for her? Was it not always so: always these tennis-parties together, always meeting at friends' houses where he, Addie, never went? . . . Where were they coming from now? Where had they been? Was he bringing her home? How intimate their conversation sounded, how sad almost! Had they grown fond of each other, in a dangerous increasing friendship?

He followed them unobserved, almost glad to have surprised them, suspicious in his jealous grief. Did not he still love his wife, notwithstanding their deep-seated differences? . . . He slackened his pace and followed very slowly. . . . After his first access of jealousy, he seemed rather to feel a certain curiosity to observe in silence, to make a diagnosis. His nature got the upper hand of him, the nature of one who is born to heal and who, before healing, diagnoses the disease. Yes, jealousy still smouldered within him; but he felt even more distinctly the craving for knowledge. Did he not still love Mathilde? . . . Ah, but was she indispensable to his life?

That suddenly became clear to him: indispensable to his life she was not. . . . His children, yes: they belonged to all of them, to all of them yonder, in the old house, the old family-house. She, his wife, did not. His children were indispensable to