Van Oudijck was in a gloomy mood. He was accustomed to receiving, at regular intervals, anonymous letters, venomous libels spewed forth from quiet corners, bespattering at one time an assistant-resident, at another a controller, besmirching now the native head-men and now his own family; sometimes taking the form of a friendly warning, sometimes displaying a malicious delight in wounding; very, very anxious to open his eyes to the shortcomings of his officials and to his wife's misconduct. He was so completely used to this that he did not count the letters, reading them hastily or hardly at all and carelessly destroying them. Accustomed as he was to judging for himself, these spiteful warnings made no impression on him, though they reared their heads like hissing snakes among all the letters which the post brought him daily; and as regards his wife he was so blind, he had always been so much in the habit of picturing Léonie in the tranquillity of her smiling indifference and in the home-like sociability which she most certainly attracted round her--in the hollow void of the residency, whose chairs and ottomans seemed always arranged for a reception--that he could never have credited the most trivial of all these slanders. He never mentioned them to her. He loved his wife; he was in love with her; and, as he always saw her almost silent in society, as she never flirted or coquetted, he never glanced into the slough of corruption that was her soul. At home, indeed, he was absolutely blind. At home he displayed that utter blindness which is often seen in men who are very capable and efficient in their business or profession; who are accustomed to scan with sharp eyes the wide perspective of their official duties, but who are near-sighted at home; who are wont to analyse things in the lump, but not their psychological details; whose knowledge of mankind is based on principles, and who divide mankind into types, as in the caste of an old-fashioned play; who can at once plumb the capacity of their subordinates, but are utterly unable to realize the intricate complex, like a tangled arabesque, like rankly-growing tendrils, of the psychic involution of those who form their own household: always gazing over their heads, failing to grasp the inner meaning of their speech, and taking no interest in the kaleidoscopic emotions of hatred and jealousy and life and love that shine with prismatic hues right before their eyes. He loved his wife and he loved his children, because the feeling and the fact of paternity were necessities of his being; but he knew neither his wife nor his children. He knew nothing about Léonie; and he had never realized that Theo and Doddie had secretly remained faithful to their mother, so far away in Batavia, ruined by her unspeakable mode of life, and that they felt no love for him. He thought that they did give him their love; and, as for him ... when he thought of them, a slumbering affection awoke within him.