"Say you will marry me to-morrow."
This time, from sheer amazement, she sprang back, out of the loosened clasp of his arms.
"To-morrow?" she gasped. "Are you crazy? Why," with a little shudder, "to-morrow was to be the day I was to——"
"To marry a man you didn't love. That would have made it forever a day of shame. You owe 'to-morrow' something to atone for that. Pay its debt by marrying me then."
"I—I can't," she protested. "What—what would people say?"
"Katje!" broke in the Dead Man. "When you shall have learned that 'what people say' is the most senseless bugbear in all this wide world of senseless bugbears, you will be far on the road to true greatness. You will have broken the heaviest, most galling, most idiotically useless fetter that weights down humanity. Being a woman you will never be able wholly to free yourself from that same fetter. But lift its weight from your soul just this once! You were going to curse your life with a blasphemously wicked, loveless marriage to-morrow. And the world would have approved. You have a chance to atone for an attempted wrong and to win happiness for yourself and the man you love, to-morrow, by marrying James then. A few representatives of the world will hold up their hands and squawk: 'How scandalously sudden! I suppose she did it to show she didn't mind Frederik's jilting her.' And for the sake of the people who would have approved a crime and who will sneer at a good and wise deed, you are going to throw away many days of bliss, and senselessly postpone the one perfect Event of your life. Is this my wise little girl or is it some one just as stubborn and foolish as her old uncle used to be? Tell me."
"Why should we care what 'people say'?" urged Hartmann as Kathrien hesitated. "The opinions of other people wreck lots of lives. Let's be great enough and wise enough to choose our own happiness! Don't let's be stubborn like poor old Mr. Grimm, and——"
"James!" she cried in wonder. "Those are just the very things I was thinking. That's the second time in a few minutes that you have read my mind."
"Perhaps it was you who were reading mine," said Hartmann. "That's what people call 'Telepathy,' isn't it?"
"Yes," smiled the Dead Man. "That is what 'people' call it—who know no better. Oh, what a jumble people do make of the simple things of the Universe!"