Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/203

Rh of whirling among one another and round one another like that? . . . It suddenly appeared to her that, of all these people who belonged to her and of all the others, the acquaintances, whom with a swift mental effort she grouped around them, there was not one who could send a single thought shining out far and wide, towards the wide horizons yonder, without thinking of himself, his wife and his children and clinging to his prejudices about money, position, religion and birth. . . As regards money, it was almost a distinction among all of them not to have any and then to live as if they had. Position was what they strove for; and those who did not strive for it, such as Paul and Ernst, were criticized for their weakness. Religion was, with those other people, the mere acquaintances, not belonging to their circle, sometimes a matter of decency or of political interest; but, in their set, with its East-Indian leaven, it was ignored, quietly and calmly, never thought about or talked about, save that the children were just confirmed, quickly, as they might be given a dancing- or music-lesson. Birth, birth, that was everything; and even then there was that superior contempt for new titles of nobility, that respect only for old titles and a tendency to think themselves very grand, even though they were not titled, as members of a patrician Dutch-Indian family which, in addition to its original importance, had also absorbed the importance attaching to the