This oration Van Lieverlee delivered with great emphasis while slowly moving forward over the short, smooth grass, accompanying the cadences of the well-chosen sentences with wide time-beats of the ebony walking-stick. Johannes was convinced--to such a degree that he perceived in it naught else than the complement and completion of that which Markus, up to the present, had taught him. Yes, he might go to his children now. He was sure of it. Markus would approve. "I wish that Marjon might hear you--just once," said he. "Marjon? Is that your comrade? Then why does he not come? Bless me! It was a girl, though, truly! What _are_ you to each other?" Van Lieverlee stopped, and, stroking his small, flaxen beard gave Johannes another keen look. "Do you not really think, Johannes," he proceeded, with significant glances, and in a judicial tone, "do you not think ... h'm ... to put it mildly, that you are rather free and easy?" "What do you mean?" asked Johannes, looking straight at him, unsuspiciously. "You are a sly little customer, and you know remarkably well how to conduct yourself; but there is not a bit of need for your troubling yourself about me. I am not one of the narrow-minded, every-day sort of people. Such things are nothing to me--no more than a dry leaf. I only wish you to bear in mind the difficulties. We must not expose our esoteric position. There are too many who understand nothing about it, and would get us into all kinds of difficulties. Countess Dolores, for example, is still very backward in _that_ respect." Johannes understood next to nothing of this harangue, but he was afraid of being taken for a fool if he let it be evident. So he ventured the remark: "I will do my best." Van Lieverlee burst out laughing, and Johannes laughed with him, pleased that he appeared to have said something smart. Thereupon he took his leave, and went to look up Marjon, that they might go to the city of the miners. III The walls of the little house were much thicker than those of the houses of Dutch laborers. The small sashes, curtained with white muslin, lay deep in the window-openings, and upon each broad sill stood a flowering plant and a begonia. When Johannes and Marjon looked in through the window, Markus was sitting at the table. The housewife stood beside him, sleeves tucked up, carrying on her left arm a half-sleeping child, while with her right hand she was putting food upon his plate. A somewhat older child stood by his knee watching the steaming: food. The mother's cheeks were pale and sunken, from sorrow, and her eyes were still full of tears. "Nothing will come of it, after all," she said with a sigh. "If only he had been wiser! Those miserable roysterers have talked him into it. That's what comes of those meetings. If only he had stayed at home! The husband belongs at home. "Do not be afraid, mother," said Markus. "He did what he sincerely thought was right. Who does that can always be at peace."