that's because you always keep your windows shut! You want more
ventilation, really, in Holland. I assure you, I should stifle in this
atmosphere."

"Come, Adolphine, do come in...."

"No, really not. I'm going; make my apologies to your husband. Good-bye,
Constance. Come, Carolientje."

And, as though she were really suffocating, she hurried to the
front-door with her daughter, first glancing through the open door of
the dining-room, noticing the hot-house grapes, the pink roses, screwing
up her eyes to read the label on the champagne-bottle from which Paul
was filling up the glasses. Then she pushed Carolientje before her and
departed, slamming the front-door after her....

Constance went back to the dining-room. Her nerves were shaken, but she
kept a good countenance.

"It was Adolphine, wasn't it?" asked Paul.

"Yes, but she wouldn't come in," said Constance. "It's such a pity,
she's such good company...."

She did not mean it, but she wished to mean it. That she said so was not
hypocrisy on her part. Any other evening, after Adolphine's comments,
all in five minutes, on her house, her street, her candles, her fires,
her dress and her complexion, she would probably have flung herself at
full length on her sofa, to recover from the annoyance of it. But now
she was the hostess; and she showed no discomposure and asked the men
not to mind her and to stay and smoke their cigars with her, at the
dinner-table. She herself poured out the coffee, from her dainty little
silver-gilt service, and the liqueurs; and, when Paul asked her if she
would not smoke a cigarette, she answered, with her pretty expression
and the little laugh at the bend of her lips which made her so young
that night and caused her to look so very charming:

"No, I used to smoke, in my flighty days; but I gave it up long ago."

CHAPTER XXII

Marietje van Saetzema stood at the window and looked out into the
street. She looked down the whole street, because the house, a
corner-house, stood not in the length of it, but in the width,
half-closing the street, making it a sort of courtyard of big houses.
The street stretched to some distance; and another house part-closed the
farther end, turning it actually into a courtyard, occupied by
well-to-do people. The two rows of gables ran along with a fine
independence of chimney-stacks, of little cast-iron pinnacles and
pointed zinc roofs, little copper weathercocks and little balconies and
bow-