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208 tears flowed incessantly down her pale face, which in those few weeks had fallen away till it was the face of an old woman. She lay there feeble and ill; and it seemed as if Van Naghel's death, coming suddenly as an additional catastrophe on that evening of misfortunes—her guests in the drawing-room, Emilie hiding upstairs, Van Raven waiting below—had so terribly shaken her composure, the composure of a prudent, resourceful woman of the world, that she was simply compelled to speak of private matters which she would never have mentioned before. . . An instinct drove her into Constance' arms, drove her to unbosom herself to Constance as the only one who could understand her. Her near-sighted, blinking eyes sought anxiously, through her tears, to read the expression on Constance' face. And she was so broken, so shattered that Constance had to make an effort to realize that it was really Bertha whom she held in her arms.

The ill-feeling which she had cherished for months past was gone. None of it remained in her soul, in her heart, as though she had passed out of the depths of that atmosphere to purer heights of understanding and feeling. Only for a moment did she still remember that evening when she herself, in this same room, had implored Bertha and Van Naghel to help her "rehabilitate" herself in the eyes of their friends and of the Hague. It seemed long ago, years ago. She could hardly understand herself: