Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/328

320 to seek his own life! . . . Her son! To provide him for a few years more with the paternal house, that wretched fabric of lies, which he, the boy, alone kept together. . . for his sake and for the sake of that joint falsehood, she would have to reject the new life of truth! . . . It was as if she were standing in a maze; but she was certain that she would not have hesitated in that maze, if the decision had been left to her. . . that she would have known how to take the path of simple honesty. . . that she would have elected to separate, in spite of Addie. . . that she loved her new life—and the stranger—more than her child!

She had learnt to know herself in that new atmosphere of pure truth; and now. . . now she saw so far into those translucent depths that she was frightened and shuddered as in the presence of something monstrous; for it seemed monstrous to her to place anything above her child, above the dear solace of so many years. ..

Just then Van der Welcke came home; she heard him put away his bicycle, go up the stairs. . . and then turn back, as if reflecting that he could no longer avoid his wife. He entered, abruptly. She, trembling, had sat down, because she felt on the verge of falling. ..

"Has Addie told you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, in a low voice.

"And . . . you think it is the best thing? . . ."