Heaven. For the longer the dissension endures, the wider and deeper it
grows by the fallibility and irascibility of human nature: these are
not confined to either side, and finally the invariable end is
reached--both in the wrong.

The combatants were unequally matched: Elias was angry, Cornelis and
Sybrandt spiteful; but Gerard, having a larger and more cultivated mind,
saw both sides where they saw but one, and had fits of irresolution,
and was not wroth, but unhappy. He was lonely, too, in this struggle.
He could open his heart to no one. Margaret was a high-spirited girl:
he dared not tell her what he had to endure at home; she was capable of
siding with his relations by resigning him, though at the cost of her
own happiness. Margaret Van Eyck had been a great comfort to him on
another occasion; but now he dared not make her his confidant. Her own
history was well known. In early life she had many offers of marriage;
but refused them all for the sake of that art, to which a wife's and
mother's duties are so fatal: thus she remained single and painted with
her brothers. How could he tell her that he declined the benefice she
had got him, and declined it for the sake of that which at his age she
had despised and sacrificed so lightly?

Gerard at this period bade fair to succumb. But the other side had a
horrible ally in Catherine, senior. This good-hearted but uneducated
woman could not, like her daughter, act quietly and firmly: still less
could she act upon a plan. She irritated Gerard at times, and so helped
him; for anger is a great sustainer of the courage: at others she turned
round in a moment and made onslaughts on her own forces. To take
a single instance out of many: one day that they were all at home,
Catherine and all, Cornelis said: "Our Gerard wed Margaret Brandt? Why,
it is hunger marrying thirst."