"I say, dear, come for a ride with me. It'll freshen you up."

She looked at him dejectedly, shook her head:

"I have a headache."

"That's just why you ought to come, dear. Come along, do ... to please me."

He stroked her hair. She took his hand and put it to her lips.

"Come."

"Really, Uncle, my head's too bad."

"Then, why don't you go and sit in the garden? It's so hot in here."

"Aunt Constance is taking me for a drive presently; and Mary's coming with us."

"Paul, can't you ride a bicycle? There's one of Addie's which you could have."

"No, my dear chap, it makes you so hot. And all that perspiring is such a dirty business."

"Well, in that case," thought Van der Welcke, "I'll go on my own, but it's not particularly cheerful. If only Guy weren't working! I can't very well take him from his work ... to come cycling! So I'll go on my own.... Lord, Lord, how boring!... How boring everything and everybody is ... without my boy! How that poor Gerdy is moping!... No. I can't endure it, I can't do it, I can't go bicycling by myself.... I'll ask Guy to come. It'll do him good: the boy is too healthy to be always sitting with a pile of books round him."

Van der Welcke went upstairs, reflecting that Addie would not approve at all if he knew that his own father was taking Guy from his work ... to go bicycling, as he had often taken Addie himself in the past.

"But Addie has so much method, he used to divide his time so splendidly between his work, his mother ... and me," thought Van der Welcke.

"Still, to-day, I simply can _not_ go bicycling on my own ... and so I'll just play the part of the tempter."

He had reached the first storey; and here too the windows on the pa.s.sage were wide open and the summer, fragrant and radiant, entered the gloomy old house, whose brown shadows vanished in patches of sunlight. The sunlight glided along the dark walls, the oak doors, the worn stairs, along the faded carpets and curtains and through the open doors; and it was strange, but all this new summer, however much Van der Welcke had longed for it throughout the long, dreary winter, the winter of wind and rain, now failed to cheer him, on the contrary, depressed him with inexplicable sadness.

He now opened the door of Addie's study. Since Addie and Mathilde had moved to the Hague, the room had remained the same as regards furniture, but somehow dead; only in the morning Guy usually sat working at his table by the window and Van der Welcke was sure to find him there. But he was not there; and the books and maps had obviously not been opened or looked at.

"Where can the boy be?" thought Van der Welcke. "He can't still be in bed."

The room did not look as if anyone had been there that morning. There were a couple of letters on Addie's writing-table, where the maids always left any that arrived for him at the old address, so that he might find them when he came down, once or twice a week, for the brief visit to which every one at home looked forward.

Van der Welcke moodily closed the door:

"I'd better see if he is still upstairs," he thought, going up the second flight.

Since Guy had given up his bedroom to Marietje van Saetzema, he slept in a little dressing-room. The door was open; the bed was made.

"The fellow must have gone out already," thought Van der Welcke. "It's a dirty trick not to let me know. Well, I shall go by myself: I need some air."

Angrily he went downstairs, through the hall, to the outhouse where the bicycles were kept. Guy's was not there.

"There, I said so: he's gone out and never even let me know. Oh, it's always like that: those children are always selfish. We do everything for them, when they've got no claim on us; and what sort of thanks do we receive?... The boy knows that I'm fond of him, that I like cycling with him when Addie's not here, but he doesn't so much as think of looking for me and asking me to go with him.... It's all egoism, it's always thinking of your own self.... If there's any paying to be done, that's all right, that's what Uncle Henri's there for; but the least little thought for me ... not a bit of it!... That's the way it goes. I've lost Addie ... and tried to find him again in another and it's simply impossible and ridiculous."

Still young and active, he slung himself on his bicycle and for a minute or two enjoyed the motion of the handsome, glittering machine, as it glided down the summer lanes; but very soon he began to think, gloomily:

"A motor-car I should have liked to have. I'm not buying one because of those everlasting boys: life is expensive enough as it is.... And instead of Guy's thinking of me now and again.... Ah, well, if you want to do good to others, you must just do it because it is good; for to expect the least bit of grat.i.tude is all rot!"

No, cycling alone did not console him; his handsome, glittering, nickel-plated machine glided listlessly down the summer lanes and he suddenly turned round:

"That's enough for me ... all by myself, without anybody or anything...."

And he rode back home slowly, put the machine away and looked at the empty stand where Guy usually kept his machine.

"Have you seen Guy?" asked Constance, meeting her husband in the hail.

"He's out," said Van der Welcke, curtly and angrily.

"He hasn't been working," she added. "I always look into Addie's study to see if Guy is at work: Addie asked me to."

"No, he has not been working; he's...."

"Out?"

"Yes, with his bicycle."

"They why didn't he ask you to go with him?"

"I'm sure _I_ don't know," said Van der Welcke, angrily, shrugging his shoulders.

Constance too did not think it friendly of Guy:

"What does it mean?" she wondered to herself. "He ought to have been working, but, if he wanted to go cycling, he might really have let his uncle know."

And her soul too became filled with melancholy, because young people were inevitably so ungrateful. But she said nothing to Van der Welcke; and they never knew that they often thought and felt alike, as in an imperceptible harmony of approaching old age that found only a negative expression: they so seldom quarrelled nowadays, at most exchanged a single irritable word, even though no deep sympathy had ever come to them....

Constance went to her room to put on a hat; the carriage was ordered; she was going for a drive with the girls. She felt worried about poor Gerdy, who no longer took pleasure in anything:

"It will pa.s.s," she thought. "We have all of us, in our time, been through a phase of melancholy.... Adeline told me that Gerdy was in love with Erzeele ... but he doesn't appear to think about her.... Oh, how I worry and worry about it all: about my poor boy, about Mathilde!...

Erzeele is bound ... is bound to be attracted by her.... Come, I need air, in this fine weather; and yet this warm air oppresses me: the summer is always oppressive in our country. The weather in our country is always _becoming_ something: it never has become anything, like the weather in the south; it is becoming, always becoming something....

It's sultry now, the sun is scorching; we are sure to have a storm this evening."

She now left her room, ready, and thought:

"Addie is coming to lunch to-day; it's his day: oh, how I always long for that day!... Last time, he had to answer some letters and ran for ink for his writing-table. I'll just see if everything is in order now."

She entered the room that used to be Addie's study:

"Yes, the ink's there," she told herself, with a glance at the writing-table. "How uncosy, how cold the room looks, with nothing but the old furniture, the old man's furniture!... There are letters for Addie again: the poor boy never has any rest...."

Casually she took a step towards the table and was struck by the appearance of the letters:

"What is that?" she thought.

The letters--there were three of them--were without stamps or postmarks: it was this that had struck her.