Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/302

294 pouring down his back! Never in his life had he shivered like that! . . . How hard that photograph of his children was! He felt it on his heart like a plank. How long had he been carrying it about with him? Brrr, brrr! He might just as well have let her have it: it was the only thing that she had asked him for. . . . Money he had never given her: only fifteen guilders—brrr, brrr!—fif—brrr!—teen—brrr!—guilders. . . . Come, why not do it now? . . . Just hand it in, at her door—brrr!—and then—brrr!—and then—brrr!—home, to bed. . . nice and warm in bed! . ..

The thought suddenly took definite shape and it drove him on along the Kanaal. Here also the mist hung like a haze over the water and the meadows on the other side; and, shivering and shuddering under the fiery lick of the dragon's tongue, Gerrit hurried to the Frederikstraat. That was where she lived, that was where he had been so often lately, until that last time when she had begged him not to come back again and to give her, as a keepsake, the portrait. . . the portrait of his children. He would leave it now at the door. He had taken it in his hand, because it lay like a plank on his heart; and her name was on the envelope. . . . Brrr! . . . Hand it in quickly and then—brrr!—nice and warm in bed.

The landlady opened the door.

"Would you please give this to the young lady?"