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256 sob, jarring every nerve with a shock that seemed to leave her rigid. She shut her eyes, buried her face in Constance' shoulder and remained lying like this, after that one convulsive sob, motionless, pale, as though she were dying, as though devastated with sorrow. Bertha, opposite her, stared at her vaguely, with her hands lying helplessly on her black dress.

And Constance could find no words. Time after time she thought of mentioning Van Vreeswijck's name, time after time the name died away on her lips. She gently urged Marianne to control herself, assuring her that she was not angry, had never been angry. And for a moment, thinking of herself, she felt afraid.

If love could be now gladness and now mourning, as it had been and was in this suffering, love-stricken child, should it not be the same with her—that gladness and oh, perhaps later, O God, that mourning!—with her, the middle-aged woman, who felt herself growing younger and a new life coursing through her: at first, in the soft spring flush of a girl's dreams; now in the summer glory of a woman's—a young woman's—love? But there was a mirror opposite her; and she saw Marianne grief-smitten, shaken with sobs. . . and in herself she saw nothing! She seemed to have the power to hide her happiness in her secret self: her agony—O God!—she would also hide later in her secret