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 CHAPTER XXXI

it all been an illusion then? Was it all for nothing?

The days passed slowly, one after the other. She saw Van Vreeswijck and felt for him, their friend, in his silent grief; she bade good-bye to Bertha and her children. She knew that Van der Welcke had seen Marianne once more before her departure; and her heart was full of pity for them both.

Had it all been an illusion then, this world of feeling, this little world of her own self? Oh, he was going to England, to lecture on Peace; for him there were always those mighty problems which consoled him for the smallness of that little world of self! But she, had she lost everything, now that the illusion no longer shone before her, now that the magic cities had fallen to pieces, now that everything had become very dreary in the disenchantment and self-reproach of realizing that she had not loved her son enough, that she had not loved him as well as his father loved him, not as well as she had loved the stranger, the friend who had taught her to live? . ..

Had she lost everything then? Now, ah now, she was really old, grey-haired; now her eye was no longer bright, her step no longer brisk; now it was