CATHERINE. [With a revulsion of feeling.] No! No! No! [She covers her face with her hands—trying to control herself.] Please!… Not now….
FREDERIK. Why not now? [Suspiciously.] Has Hartman been talking to you? What has he been saying to you? [CATHERINE starts slowly up the stairs.] Wait a moment, please…. [As she retreats a step up the stairs, he follows her.] Do you really imagine you—you care for that fellow?
CATHERINE. Don't—please.
FREDERIK. I'm sorry to insist. Of course, I knew there was a sort of school-girl attachment on your part; … that you'd known each other since childhood. I don't take it at all seriously. In three months, you'll forget him. I must insist, however, that you do not speak to him again to-night. After to-morrow—after we are married—I'm quite sure that you will not forget you are my wife, Catherine—my wife.
CATHERINE. I sha'n't forget. [She escapes into her room. FREDERIK goes to his desk.
PETER. [Confronting FREDERIK.] Now, sir, I have something to say to you, Frederik Grimm, my beloved nephew! I had to die to find you out; but I know you! [FREDERIK is reading a letter.] You sit there opening a dead man's mail—with the heart of a stone—thinking: "He's gone! he's gone!— so I'll break every promise!" But there is something you have forgotten— something that always finds us out: the law of reward and punishment. Even now it is overtaking you. Your hour has struck. [FREDERIK takes up another letter and begins to read it; then, as though disturbed by a passing thought, he puts it down. As though perplexed by the condition of his own mind, he ponders, his eyes resting unconsciously on PETER.] Your hour has struck.
FREDERIK. [To himself.] What in the world is the matter with me to-night?
PETER. Read!
FREDERIK. [Has opened a long, narrow, blue envelope containing a letter
on blue paper and a small photograph. He stares at the letter, aghast.]
My God! Here's luck…. Here's luck! From that girl Annamarie to my uncle.
Oh, if he had read it!
PETER. [Standing in front of FREDERIK looks into space—as though reading the letter in the air.] "Dear Mr. Grimm: I have not written because I can't do anything to help William, and I am ashamed."