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384 become a farmer, if he must be a Dutchman in Holland, hidden somewhere from all our family, our friends and our acquaintances! And it’s all, all your fault!”

“You are unreasonable!” she cried, wincing under his insults. “If we have anything to reproach ourselves with, then it falls upon both of us; and you have not the right to let me, me, a woman, bear the burden of our misery alone!”

“That misery would at least not have been discussed, mocked at, criticized, ridiculed, traduced,” he shouted, raging and stamping, “if you had not insisted on coming back to Holland!”

“Was I the only one to wish it?”

“Very well,” he admitted, losing all his self-control, “I did too. But we were both fools, to return to this rotten country and these rotten people!”

“I don’t need them. I only longed for my family.”

“For your family! The Saetzemas, with whom we have quarrelled already, to whom we never speak except at Mamma’s; the Van Naghels, who are no use to us: is that how you want to live, for your boy, in Holland, here, buried away in your Kerkhoflaan, in your house, in your rooms, with no one but Vreeswijck, who sometimes does us the honour to come and dine with us? Whom do we know? Who comes to see us? Who cares a jot about us?”

“I only wanted the affection of my family!”

“And for the sake of that affection, do you want to go on living here like this, buried away, when you