Ah, how she wept! Sob, sob, sob;
gasps and sighs and stifled ejaculations, her small right hand clinched
and beating on her mother's knee; and the mother weeping over her.
Kristian Koppig shut his window. Nothing but a generous heart and a
Dutchman's phlegm could have done so at that moment. And even thou,
Kristian Koppig!--for the window closed very slowly.
He wrote to his mother, thus:
"In this wicked city, I see none so fair as the poor girl who lives
opposite me, and who, alas! though so fair, is one of those whom the
taint of caste has cursed. She lives a lonely, innocent life in the
midst of corruption, like the lilies I find here in the marshew, and I
have great pity for her. 'God defend her,' I said to-night to a fellow
clerk, 'I see no help for her.' I know there is a natural, and I think
proper, horror of mixed blood (excuse the mention, sweet mother), and I
feel it, too; and yet if she were in Holland today, not one of a hundred
suitors would detect the hidden blemish."
In such strain this young man wrote on trying to demonstrate the utter
impossibility of his ever loving the lovable unfortunate, until the
midnight tolling of the cathedral clock sent him to bed.
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