That's just another of my
lies to make a good impression. I've gotten so in the habit of telling
them that it is going to take me a long time to realise that one of the
chief advantages of being a rich man is the immunity from the need to
lie. The present isn't really from me. It's from Oom. Peter. You can't
refuse it from _him_. If you doubt it's Oom Peter's own direct gift, ask
Dr. McPherson. It was bad enough," he sighed, in mock despair, "for Oom
Peter to squander so much of my money while he was alive, without
keeping on doing it after he died. I hope he has stopped it at last. Or
I'll soon be reduced to standing at the subway steps with a tin cup in
my hand."

Through the forced lightness, whose effort wrung sweat from the man's
forehead, Kathrien was woman enough to see the mortal agony that lay
beneath. And again she held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Frederik," she said gently. "And may you be happy!"

He looked doubtfully at the shapely little hand. Then, with an
awkwardness strangely foreign to his normal grace, he took the hand in
both his own and stood a moment, looking down at it as though not
knowing what to do with it.

Then, very simply, he fell on his knees, touched the warm, roseleaf palm
to his lips, got up and, without looking back, hurried out of the house.

Kathrien watched his slender, carefully groomed figure until it was lost
at a turn in the rose bushes. Then she came back into the room and
stood beside Peter Grimm's old chair.

"Oom Peter!" she whispered. "This is my wedding day. You know it, don't
you? And--oh, please let me think you are close--_close_--beside me all
the time!"

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Return of Peter Grimm, by David Belasco

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