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196 away, things would never have come right. Now perhaps I can still hope: I really don’t know. . . .”

“Alone with your boy? Why don’t you speak of your husband?”

“No, not my husband.”

“Why not?”

“No, no. We only endure each other, for Addie’s sake.”

“Constance, don’t forget. . .”

“What? . . .”

“What he did for you, what his people did.”

“Oh, if only I had never accepted that sacrifice! If only I had gone right away, alone, somewhere far away! And then never come back to you all. . . . For, as it is, it was possible, after fifteen years; but then it would have been impossible. . . . To be grateful, to be grateful all the time, while all the time I am full of bitterness: I can’t do it. I can’t be grateful when I feel so bitter.”

“But, Constance, you’re back now and we are all glad to have you back.”

“Bertha, I don’t know if you mean what you say. I do know that I am happy to be back, in Holland, among you all. But I also know that, in twenty years, people drift far apart; and perhaps I, who had become a stranger, was not wise to come back to all of you, to want to be a sister to you again.”

“Perhaps we shall have to get used to one another, Constance, as sisters; but you always remained