Could it have been somebody else? It must have been somebody else. How could Femke be at Dr. Holsma’s?
No, no, it was she! Didn’t she say that she knew me? Didn’t she speak with the same voice that I heard when she called me a dear boy and gave me the kiss at the bridge?
She didn’t know then what a coward I am! She wouldn’t deny me and betray me. She would say to everybody: That is Walter, my little friend that I kissed that time, because he was so brave in fighting off those boys!
And I? Oh, help me God!
No, God has nothing to do with it. I am a coward. I can’t live this way.
He thought of suicide; and in this mood he spent that Thursday night. He arose Friday morning with the firm determination to put an end to his unworthy existence.
Fortunately, just after breakfast he was put to work on a job that is calculated to reconcile one with life.
He had been tried and convicted, the verdict being unanimous. The penalty was that he should wash his jacket till it was clean. He entered upon the task with such enthusiasm that in an hour he was running to his mother crying triumphantly:
“Look, mother! You can’t see a trace of it now!”
This little conquest dispelled all the clouds that had darkened his life.