For there was so little else. Her little circle of adherents, which she had gathered round her with so many illusions, which she invited to dinner, to which her doors were always open: what did it actually amount to? She now accepted the Doorn de Bruijns and the Rantzows as indifferent acquaintances, but no longer as friends. She suspected Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn of insincerity; Dr. Rantzow was too common, too vulgar; his wife was an insignificant German Hausfrau. True, they joined in the table-turning, but they relished the absurd ineptitudes, the indecent conversation of the mocking spirit. She and Van Helderen took the whole thing seriously, though she thought the table rather comical. And so no one but Van Helderen remained to interest her. But Van Oudijck had won her admiration. She had suddenly obtained a glimpse of his character; and, though it entirely lacked the artistic charm which had hitherto exclusively attracted her in men, she saw the fine quality also in this man, who was not at all artistic, who had not the least conception of art, but who had so much that was beautiful in his simple, manly idea of duty and in the calmness with which he endured the disappointment of his domestic life. For Eva saw that, though he adored his wife, he did not approve of Léonie's indifference to all the interests of which his own life was built up. If he saw nothing more, if he was blind to all the rest that went on in his domestic circle, this disappointment was his secret pain, to which he was not blind, deep down in himself. And she admired him; and her admiration was as it were a revelation that art does not always stand highest in the affairs of this life. She suddenly understood that the exaggerated importance attaching to art in our time was a disease from which she had suffered and was still suffering. For what was she, what did she do? Nothing. Her parents, both of them, were great artists, true artists; and their house was like a temple and their bias was comprehensible and pardonable. But what of her? She played the piano pretty well; and that was all. She had a few ideas, a little taste; and that was all. But in her time she had gushed with other girls; and she now remembered all that foolish gushing, that trick of exchanging letters crammed with cheap philosophy and written in a modern style distantly aping that of the poets Kloos and Gorter. And thus, for all her depression, her meditation carried her a stage further and she underwent a certain development. For it seemed incredible that she, the child of her parents, should not always place art above everything else.