errible moment in the room where they used to meet; De Staffelaer in
the doorway; Constance fleeing through another door; and his interview
with the injured old man, who had been good to him, in a fatherly
fashion! And he blamed her for it: it was her fault! He was a young man
then, with hardly any knowledge of the world; she, a woman of
twenty-eight, married for over five years, had enticed him, had been the
temptress! It was she, it was she: he blamed her for it! He had not
loved her at first, during the first stages of the flirtation. There had
been a chat, a waltz, a jest. Yes, then it had turned to passion; but
what was passion? The flame of a moment, flaring up and then
extinguished. And he knew it: from that day, when he stood as a culprit
in the presence of that dignified old man, from that day the flame was
extinguished. And from that day he began to see the life that lay before
him: the scandal, which filled all Rome; the despair of his pious
parents, far away at home, in Holland; Constance in Florence: their
first interview there, himself yielding to his parents' wishes and
asking her to be his wife, to marry him in England as soon as the
divorce was granted. Since then, he had always seen his fate hanging
before him; and it had crushed him, so weak, so small.... Amid the
wretchedness, amid the ruin of his young life, beside that woman in whom
he, who did not take blame to himself, never lost sight of the
worldly-wise temptress four years older than he, beside that woman, the
eternal obstacle, and amid that wretchedness, the only grace had been
the child. That which might have increased the misery had been the
mercy, from the first moment that he set eyes on it, little, red morsel
that it was: the darling child; the child that was his, though the fruit
of their misery; the child that, as it grew older, became his comfort;
the child that felt with its little hands over his face and in his hair;
the child that said "Daddy;" the child that he smothered in his arms!
The child, her child, it was true, but his child also: his child, his
son, growing up and soon becoming the little moderator between them and
the reason, also, why they remained together; the child, growing up to
boyhood and, without understanding or knowing, still feeling the eternal
struggle, the eternal misery, until its eyes became more grave and it
felt that it was the moderator and the comforter. The child, there it
sat, opposite him: his handsome