libels as this are to be published, if you reproach me with not
thinking of my son's future, then I shall alter my line of conduct and
talk to Bertha. You, on your side, talk to your friends at the Plaats
and, if you have any pride about you, refuse to have anything more to do
with them unless they accept your wife and yourself as belonging to
their set. I will stand it no longer! I wished for nothing more than
peace and affection, than to grow old here beside my mother and my
brothers and sisters; but, if there must be a scandal, notwithstanding
those simple wishes, well then a scandal there shall be, so that people
can say, with truth, 'Mrs. van der Welcke is pushing herself into the
circles to which she always used to belong.'"

"I can't do it!" he said, weakly. "I can't possibly do what you want.
After putting up with the tolerance and condescension of my former
friends, I can't go to them now and explain that my wife and I want to
call on them and their wives and expect them to call on us in return."

"Then I'll do without you!" she said. "I'm not on speaking terms with
Adolphine; but I don't need that jumble-set of hers. I believe that
Bertha still has some sisterly affection left for me; and I shall talk
to her and she will have to help me. But you will never be able to
reproach me again with not thinking of my child's future. And, if you're
too weak to show your friends what you expect of them, then I, later,
when our son meets with difficulties in his career, shall have the right
to reproach you as you are reproaching me now...."

"Reproach! I'm not thinking of reproaches!" he broke in, angrily,
illogically, unreasonably. "I'm only thinking of that rotten paper, that
rotten paper...."

He looked at it in despairing irritation:

"I'll go to the fellow, I'll slash him across the face, I'll slash him
across the face!"

She laughed, scornfully:

"Shall you do that for the sake of your son's future?"

He controlled himself, clenched his fists, rushed from the room with
tears in his eyes, flung himself in his chair upstairs, smoked cigarette
upon cigarette, walked up and down in impotent rage....

That evening, Gerrit and Paul came round. They also knew about the
_Dwarskijker:_ they said that a copy had been dropped into Van Naghel's
letter-box too. And Gerrit, getting furious, because Van der Welcke was
still furious, said:

"If you want to break the fellow's jaw, Van der Welcke, I'm your man!"

Paul w