"Can't you see I'm trying to help you, Katje?" he begged. "Can't you even hope? Come, come! Hope! Why, anybody can hope. It is the very easiest and most natural thing on earth. Especially when one is young—as you and I are. What is Youth but perpetual Hope?"
The light in her eyes deepened. Her look strayed again to the closed office door. She rose and took a step toward it, then turned, passed her hand caressingly over the flowers on the desk, and moved over to the piano.
She seated herself on the music stool and, for the first time in ten endless days, let her fingers stray over the keys. In a hushed little voice she began to sing:
"The bird so free in the heavens
Is but the slave of the nest.
For all things must toil as God wills it,
Must laugh and toil and rest.
The rose must bloom in the garden,
The bee must gather its store.
The cat must watch the mousehole,
And the dog must guard the door."
"Oh!" she broke off in sudden self-reproach. "How can I sit here singing,—at a time like this!"
"Sing!" urged the Dead Man. "Why not? Why not at a time like this as well as at any other time? Is it because you are afraid you are not being sad enough at losing me? You haven't lost me. Nothing is ever lost. The old uncle you loved doesn't sleep out in the churchyard dust. That is only a dream. He is here—alive! More alive than ever he was. A thousandfold more alive. All his age and weaknesses and faults are gone. Youth is glowing in his heart. He is bathed in it. It radiates from him. Eternal Youth that no one still on earth can know. Oh, little girl of mine, if only I could tell you what is ahead of you! It's the wonderful secret of the Universe. And you won't hear me? You won't understand?"
Still smiling, but without turning toward the loving, eager Spirit close beside her, Kathrien was looking out into the fragrant June dusk. Peter Grimm shrugged his shoulders.
"I must try some other way of making you hear," said he.
He looked up at the closed door of Willem's sick room for a moment, then nodded.
"Here comes some one," he announced, with the old whimsical twist of his lips, "who will know all about it. The secrets of the other world are as plain as day to him. He has told me so himself."