Ecstasy Read Online Free PDF Page B

…”
    His mother and his sisters tried to calm him with their authority. But he seized his books.
    “I don’t care! I won’t have it!”
    He was gone in a moment, furious, slamming the door, which muttered at the shock. Amélie shook with nervousness.
    “Oh, that boy!” she hissed out, shivering. “That Jules, that Jules …”
    “It is nothing,” said Cecile, gently, excusing him. “He is excitable …”
    She had grown a little paler, and glanced towards her boys, Dolf and Christie, who looked up in dismay, their mouths wide open with astonishment.
    “Is Jules naughty, Mamma?” asked Christie.
    She shook her head, smiling. She felt strangely weary, indefinably so. She did not know what it meant; but it seemed to her as if distant perspectives opened up before her eyes, fading away into the horizon, pale, in a great light. Nor did she know what this meant; but she was not angry with Jules, and it seemed to her as if he had not lost his temper with her, but with somebody else. A sense of the enigmatical deepness of life, the unknown of the soul’s mystery, like to a fair, bright endlessness, a faraway silvery light, shot through her in a still rapture.
    Then she laughed.
    “Jules,” she said, “is so nice when he gets excited.”
    Anna and Suzette broke up the circle, and played with the boys, looking at their picture books. Cecile spoke only to her sister. Amélie’s nerves were still quivering.
    “How can you defend those tricks of Jules?” she asked, in a relenting voice.
    “I think it so noble of him to stand up for those he likes. Don’t you think so too?”
    Amélie grew calmer. Why should she be disturbed if Cecile was not?
    “Oh yes, yes …” she replied, “I don’t know. He has a good heart I believe, but he is so unmanageable. But,who knows? … perhaps the fault is mine; if I understood better, if I had more tact …”
    She grew confused; she sought for something more to say, found nothing, wandering like a stranger through her own thoughts. Then, suddenly, as if struck by a ray of certain knowledge she said …
    “But Jules is not stupid. He has a good eye for all sorts of things, and for persons too. For my part, I believe you judge Taco Quaerts wrongly. He is a very interesting man, and a great deal more than a mere sportsman. I don’t know what it is, but there is something about him different from other people, I couldn’t say precisely what …
    “I wish Jules got on better at school. He is not stupid, but he learns nothing. He has been two years now in the third class. The boy has no application. He makes me despair of him.”
    She was silent again, and Cecile too remained silent.
    “Ah,” said Amélie, “I daresay it is not his fault. Perhaps it is my fault. Perhaps he takes after me …”
    She looked straight before her: sudden, irrepressible tears filled both her eyes, and fell into her lap.
    “Amy, what is the matter?” asked Cecile, kindly.
    But Amélie had risen, so that the girls, who were still playing with the children, might not see her tears. She could not restrain them, they streamed down, and she hurried away into the adjacent drawing room, a big room, where Cecile never sat.
    “What is the matter, Amy?” repeated Cecile.
    She threw her arms about her sister, made her sit down, pressed her head against her shoulder.
    “How do I know what it is?” sobbed Amélie. “I do not know, I do not know … I am wretched because of that feeling in my head. After all, I am not mad, am I? Really, I don’t feel mad, or as if I were going mad! But I feel sometimes as if everything had gone wrong in my head, as if I couldn’t think. Everything runs through my brain. It is a terrible feeling!”
    “Why don’t you see a doctor?” asked Cecile.
    “No, no, he might tell me I was mad, and I am not. He might try to send me into an asylum. No, I won’t see a doctor. I have every reason to be happy otherwise, have I not? I have a kind husband and dear children; I have