go," he demanded,
drunk with his new-born power and happiness.

"Yes? I'll say it."

"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!"

"Any