"Will the delusion never leave him?" asked Marianne, with tears in her eyes. "Auntie, will he never get better?"
"The doctor has every hope that it will not be permanent. . . ."
Marietje had taken possession of Emilie:
"And so you're living in Paris? With Henri? What do you do there, the two of you? Come, let's hear! Aren't you going to ask me to stay? Haven't you a spare-room? Look out: I shall come tearing in from Brussels, suddenly! Just imagine if I did!"
But by this time they had passed through the dining-room into the drawing-room, where they found Bertha. She was sitting at the window; she looked up.
"Here's Aunt Constance, Mamma. And Emilie."
Bertha merely stood up, kissed her sister and her daughter and at once dropped into her chair again. She scarcely seemed surprised at seeing them so unexpectedly. She barely asked after Mamma, after Ernst, after Henri. She seemed rooted to her seat at that window, through which she gazed at the shadows of the trees. She had grown thin, her eyes stared blankly and miserably in front of her and, in her black dress, she gave an impression of weary, listless resignation. She spoke scarcely more than a word or two, as if it were quite natural that Constance and Emilie should be sitting there.
