, sturdy boy, who looked like him, with
the fixed, earnest, gentle eyes; and he was now going to show him to his
parents: her child, it was true, the fruit of their misery, but his
child and their grandson.

The boy glanced from his father to his mother. They both sat opposite
him and both silently looked out of the window, half-turning their backs
upon each other. The boy would so gladly have taken their hands, the
hands of both of them, and said something: a word to unite them at this
moment, which he felt to be very serious; but he did not know the word,
cleverly though he knew how to talk as a rule. He glanced from his
father to his mother, from his mother to his father; and they, they did
not look, dared not look at him, feeling his glance and filled to
overflowing with their own thoughts. Then the boy felt life sinking very
heavily, like a weight, upon his small breast. He drew a very deep
breath, under the heavy weight, and his breath was a deep sigh.

They both now looked up, looked at their child. Henri would have liked
to throw out his arms, to feel his child at his heart; but the carriage
now turned through a gate and drove along a front garden of rounded
lawns, in which the rose-bushes, swathed in straw, stood waiting for the
spring.

CHAPTER XI

They stepped from the carriage; the hall-door opened. The curtains of
the front room shook slightly, as though with the trembling touch of an
old hand; but there was no one in the hall to receive them except the
butler who had opened the door.

Then Constance said:

"Henri, you go in first. I'll come presently, with Addie, when you call
me...."

He looked at her, hesitating to say that he himself wished to go in with
Addie. But she had laid her hand on the boy's shoulder and looked at Van
der Welcke so steadily that he understood that she would not consent.
And he went in, staggering like a drunken man, went into the room where
the window-curtains had trembled.

The butler retired, not knowing what to do. And Constance sat down on
the oak settle and drew Addie beside her. So she was meekly waiting in
the hall, waiting the pleasure of her father- and mother-in-law; but it
was of her own will that she waited now, after waiting nearly fourteen
years for a word that would have called her to them. With a woman's
delicacy, she had let Henri go in first to his parents; but she had set
her mind upon taking her boy to his grand-parents herself. It was for