Van Helderen's two children, a boy and girl of six and seven, were staying at Eva's; and Van Helderen came in regularly once a day for a meal. He no longer spoke of his intense feeling, as though unwilling to disturb the pleasant intimacy of their daily intercourse. And she accepted his daily visits, was powerless to keep him at a distance. He was the only man in her immediate circle with whom she could speak and think aloud; and he was a comfort to her in these days of dejection. She did not understand how she had come to this, but she gradually lapsed into an absolute apathy, a sort of annihilating condition of thinking nothing necessary. She had never been like this before. Her nature was lively and cheerful, seeking and admiring the beautiful in poetry and music and painting, things which, from her early childhood, from her childish books, she had seen about her and felt and discussed. In India she had gradually come to lack everything of which she felt a need. In her despair she succumbed to a sort of nihilism that made her ask: "What is the reason of anything?... Why the world and the people in it and the mountains?... Why all this tiny whirl of life?" And then, when she read of the social movements, of the great social problems in Europe, of the Eurasian question in Java, which was becoming more and more urgent, she thought to herself: "Why should there be a world, if man eternally remains the same, small and suffering and oppressed by all the misery of his humanity?" She did not see the purpose of it all. Half of mankind was suffering poverty and struggling upwards out of that darkness ... to what? The other half was stagnating stupidly and dully amid its riches. Between the two was a scale of gradations, from black poverty to dismal wealth. Over them stood the rainbow of the eternal illusions, love, art, the great notes of interrogation of justice and peace and an ideal future.... She felt that it was much ado about nothing, she failed to see the purpose and she thought of herself: "Why is it all so?... And why the world and poor humanity?"