e, but it is true...."

But now Van der Welcke, after his first amazement, suddenly realized the
boy's distress and caught him in his arms and took him on his knees,
there, in the big chair:

"Addie, Addie, I swear to you, it's not true! My child, it's not true,
you are my child, you are my boy, you are mine, you are mine, mine,
mine!"

"Is it really true?"

"You're mine, you're mine, Addie! They lie, they lie! Good Lord! My boy,
would I love you so madly, if you were not my boy?"

And he pressed his son to his breast, his two arms tightly round him.

"Papa, can I trust you?"

"Yes, yes, my boy! God! Those vile people! Who says it and why do they
say it? And it's a lie, Addie; they lie, they lie. You're my child,
mine, mine alone, my son and Mamma's son, my child, my darling! Would
we, your two parents, your father and your mother, be so fond of you, so
passionately fond of you, if it were not so?"

Now Addie believed and he burst into sobs. He sobbed freely, he could no
longer restrain himself and he felt as if he were sobbing for the first
time in his young life. It melted away, all his young, small, natural
manliness melted away; and he became as weak as a child, because Papa
assured him that he was the son of Papa and Mamma and because he
believed Papa, now. He sobbed wildly on his father's chest, clutching
Van der Welcke in his sturdy little arms, until both of them were nearly
stifled:

"Daddy, my Daddy!" he said, in little jerks. "Am I really your child?
Oh, tell me again: am I your child? The whole day long, Daddy, I
believed I was not your child! The whole day long, I was walking with
Frans and the Hijdrechts, thinking I was not your son. And I didn't want
to come back home, because I thought I was not your son. I wanted just
to go away somewhere, because I thought I was not your son. Daddy, tell
me, am I your son? Oh, I should have thought it so terrible if I was not
your son! I should have thought it so terrible, because I love you so
and because everything would have been for nothing then, if you weren't
my father. They said that my father was an Italian and that you, that
you were not my father. Tell me again, Daddy: are you my father?"

"Yes, my boy, I am your father."

He said it now with such conviction that Addie believed him absolutely.
But the child still clasped his father to him, as though he would never
let him go.

"Addie, how could you, how could you believe it for a moment?"

"B