"I am at the door," replied the Dead Man in solemn vehemence. "I, Peter Grimm. The uncle who loved you and whom you tricked. Anne Marie is at the door,—the little girl who is ashamed to come home. Willem is at the door—your own flesh and blood—nameless! Katje, sobbing her heart out,—James—all of us. All! We are all at the door, Frederik! At the door of your conscience. Ah, don't keep us waiting!"
CHAPTER XV
A HALF-HEARD MESSAGE
Frederik rose slowly from his chair. His face was working. Instinctively his glance lifted to Kathrien's door. His eyes grew bright and his weak mouth strong with a wondrous resolve. He crossed the room to the stair-foot; that light of pure sacrifice deepening in his whole upraised face.
"Yes!" urged the Dead Man, keeping eager pace with him in body and in thought. "Yes! Call her. Give her back her promise."
The flabby muscles of a self-indulgent man may sometimes perform a single prodigious feat of strength. Wherein they have an infinite advantage over the far flabbier resolutions of a self-indulgent man. And Frederik Grimm's weak, atrophied better self was not equal to the strain thrown upon it.
At the stair-foot, his step faltered. He halted irresolutely, while the Dead Man watched him in an anguish of hope and fear.
Then came surrender to long habit; and with it a gush of weak rage. Not at himself. He had not the strength left for that. But at the cause of his distress. He brought down his fist upon the desk with a resounding thwack. His eye fell on the open page with its pathetic scrawl of appeal.
"Damn her!" he growled, snatching up the letter and tearing it across and across. "I wish to God I'd never seen her!"