Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/268

 his soul had been wholly preoccupied with the great idea of earning money to buy two buffaloes with, as his father had never had more than one, and his thoughts had been too strongly concentrated on the return-meeting with Adinda, leaving no room for very great sadness about their parting. He had bidden her farewell with over-exalted hopes, and his thoughts had connected that farewell with the ultimate reunion under the ketapan. For so great a part the prospect of that reunion played in his heart that, passing the tree on leaving Badoor, he felt almost joyful, as though they were already over, the six-and-thirty moons which divided him from that moment. It had seemed to him as if he had only to turn round as though returning from the voyage, to see Adinda waiting for him under the tree.

But the further he went away from Badoor, and the more he felt the terrible length of only one day, the more he began to think the thirty-six moons that lay before him a time of endless duration. There was something in his soul that made him stride along less quickly. He felt sadness in his knees, and though it was no despondency that overcame him, still it was melancholy, which is not far removed from despondency. He thought of turning back, but what would Adinda say to so little courage?

So he went on, although less rapidly than the first day. He held the melatti in his hand, and often pressed it against his breast. In these three days he had grown much older, and could not now understand how formerly he had been so calm, when yet Adinda was so close to him, and he could see her every time, and as long as he liked! For he would not be calm if he could expect that presently she would stand before him. And also he did not understand how it was that after their parting he had not turned back once more to look at her just once again. Also he remembered how quite recently he had quarrelled with her about the cord she had spun for the kite of her little brothers, and which had broken because, so he held, there was a flaw in her weft, and this had lost them a bet with the children of Tjipooroot. “How had it been