if she didn't come back, it would be there, with the photograph of his children. . . . She'd probably cleared out. . . . Yes, she had probably cleared out . . . with her rich young fellow. . . . Well, he, whoever he was, wouldn't remember her as he remembered her in the old days. . . . Brrrrrr! . . . Lord, Lord, how he was shivering! . . . Oh, to be in bed! . . . When could Constance and Van der Welcke be back? . . . Oh, the express! . . . Oh, the coffin! . . . Oh, the fiery lick of the dragon, whose great, hairy body filled the whole grey sky with its wriggling! . . .
He turned down the Javastraat: he wanted to hurry home; his teeth were chattering; he felt as if ice-cold water was dripping from him, while the confounded brute sucked his marrow with long, fiery licks of its tongue. Near the Schelpkade, he met a little group of four or five policemen: rough words sounded loud; their words sounded so loud through the unreality of the mist that they woke him out of a walking sleep, out of his dream of the dragon-beast with the stiff bristles:
"She was quite blue," he heard one of them say.
They were striding along, talking loudly, as if something startling had happened. Gerrit suddenly stood rooted to the ground:
"Who was blue?" he asked, in a hoarse bellow.
The policeman saluted:
"Sir?"
