e right, "these shares
are not worth a shilling and will never be. We all know it at home
there."

"Anne-Marie, you make me out a scoundrel!"

She surveys him all over as if her eyes were the moving blades of a
pair of scissors, and she cuts off him bit by bit everything in
which she had clothed him; and when at last she sees him in all the
nakedness of egotism and selfishness, her terrible little tongue
passes sentence upon him:--

"What else are you?"

"Anne-Marie!"

"Yes, what else are we both," continues the merciless tongue,
which, since it has once started, finds it best to clear up this
matter which has tortured her conscience ever since she has begun
to realize that this rich man who owned this big estate had a heart
too which could suffer and yearn. So while her tongue is so well
started and all shyness seems to have fallen from her, she says:--

"When we placed ourselves in the chaise at home there, what did we
think? What did we talk about on the way? About how we would
deceive him there. 'You must be brave, Anne-Marie,' you said. 'And
you must be crafty, Maurits,' I said. We thought only of
ingratiating ourselves. We wished to have much and we wished to
give nothing except hypocrisy. It was not our intention to say:
'Help us, because we are poor and care for one another,' but we
were to flatter and fawn until Uncle was charmed by me or by you;
that was our intention. But we meant to give nothing in return;
neither love nor respect nor even gratitude. And why did you not
come alone, why must I come too? You wished to show me to him; you
wished me to--to--"

Uncle Theodore rises when he sees Maurits raise his hand against
her. For now he has finished counting, and follows what is passing
with his heart swelling with hope. His heart flies wide open to
receive her as she now screams and runs into his arms, runs there
without hesitation or consideration, quite as if there were no
other place on earth to which to run.

"Uncle, he will strike me!"

And she presses close, close to him.

But Maurits is now calm again. "Forgive my impetuosity, Anne-Marie,"
he says. "It hurt me to hear you speak in such a childish way in
Uncle's presence. But Uncle must also understand that you are only
a child. Still I grant that not even the most just wrath gives a
man the right to strike a woman. Come here now and kiss me. You
need not seek protection from me with anybody."

She does not move, does not turn, only cl