without further explanation, Ida broke with Eva. Eva withdrew into herself. Even in Surabaya, where she went to do some shopping, she heard the scandalous chatter; and she became so sick of her world and her friends that she silently shrank back into herself. She wrote to Van Helderen not to call any more. She entreated him to become reconciled with his wife. She gave up seeing him. And she was now all alone. She felt that she was not in the mood to find comfort in any one around her. There was no sympathy and no understanding in India for such moods as hers. And so she shut herself up. Her husband was working hard, as usual. But she devoted herself more zealously to her little boy, she immersed herself in her love for her child. She withdrew herself into her love for her house. Well, this was her life of never going out, of never seeing any one, of never hearing any other music than her own. This was seeking comfort in her house, her child and her books. This was the personality that she had become, after her early illusions and strivings. She now constantly felt the yearning for Europe, for Holland, for her parents, for people of artistic culture. And now it developed into hatred for the country which she had at first seen in the overwhelming grandeur of its beauty, with its majestic mountains and the softly-creeping mystery that lurked in nature and humanity. Now she hated nature and humanity; and their mystery terrified her. She filled her life with thoughts of her child. Her boy, little Otto, was three years old. She would guide him, make a man of him. From the day of his birth she had had vague illusions of later seeing her son a great artist, by preference a great writer, famous throughout the world. But she had learnt much since then. She felt that art does not always stand supreme. She felt that there are higher things, which sometimes, in her despondency, she denied, but which were there nevertheless, radiant and great. These things had to do with the shaping of the future; these things had to do above all with peace, justice and brotherhood. Oh, the great brotherhood of the poor and the rich! Now, in her loneliness, she contemplated this as the highest ideal at which one can work, as sculptors work on a monument. Justice and peace would follow. But human brotherhood must be aimed at first; and she wished her son to work at it. Where? In Europe? In India? She did not know; she did not see it before her. She saw it in Europe rather than in India, where the inexplicable, the enigmatical, the fearful remained in the foreground of her thoughts. How strange it was, how strange!... She was a woman made for ideals. Perhaps this by itself was the simple explanation of what she felt and feared ... in India....