His wife was now standing close behind him.  Four and twenty years his junior, she seemed like a timid girl, as she raised her arm, yet did not venture to divert her husband’s attention from his business.

She waited quietly till he had signed the first paper, then turned her pretty head aside, and blushing faintly, exclaimed with downcast eyes: 

“It is I, Peter!”

“Very well, my child,” he answered curtly, raising the second paper nearer his eyes.

“Peter!” she exclaimed a second time, still more eagerly, but with timidity.  “I have something to tell you.”

Van der Werff turned his head, cast a hasty, affectionate glance at her, and said: 

“Now, child?  You see I am busy, and there is my hat.”

“But Peter!” she replied, a flash of something like indignation sparkling in her eyes, as she continued in a voice pervaded with a slightly perceptible tone of complaint:  “We haven’t said anything to each other to-day.  My heart is so full, and what I would fain say to you is, must surely—­”

“When I come home Maria, not now,” he interrupted, his deep voice sounding half impatient, half beseeching.  “First the city and the country—­then love-making.”

At these words, Maria raised her head proudly, and answered with quivering lips: 

“That is what you have said ever since the first day of our marriage.”

“And unhappily—­unhappily—­I must continue to say so until we reach the goal,” he answered firmly.  The blood mounted into the young wife’s delicate cheeks, and with quickened breathing, she answered in a hasty, resolute tone: 

“Yes, indeed, I have known these words ever since your courtship, and as I am my father’s daughter never opposed them, but now they are no longer suited to us, and should be:  ’Everything for the country, and nothing at all for the wife.’”

Van der Werff laid down his pen and turned full towards her.

Maria’s slender figure seemed to have grown taller, and the blue eyes, swimming in tears, flashed proudly.  This life-companion seemed to have been created by God especially for him.  His heart opened to her, and frankly stretching out both hands, he said tenderly: 

“You know how matters are!  This heart is changeless, and other days will come.”

“When?” asked Maria, in a tone as mournful as if she believed in no happier future.

“Soon,” replied her husband firmly.  “Soon, if only each one gives willingly what our native land demands.”

At these words the young wife loosed her hands from her husband’s, for the door had opened and Barbara called to her brother from the threshold.

“Herr Matanesse Van Wibisma, the Glipper, is in the entry and wants to speak to you.”

“Show him up,” said the burgomaster reluctantly.  When again alone with his wife, he asked hastily “Will you be indulgent and help me?”