And so she spent much of her time as she had spent that first lonely Sunday afternoon--sitting on the steps above her scouring-shelf, looking out sadly and dreamily across the marsh-land and the sea. Or she would walk slowly to the end of the village, where rough steps went down to a little-used canal, and there would lean against the rail while she gazed steadfastly across the marshes seaward--trying to fancy that she could see the fishing fleet, and trying to build in her breast little hope-castles in which Krelis again was all her own. They comforted her, these hope-castles: even though always, when the week ended and the fleet was back again, they came crashing down. Sometimes Krelis's boat did not return at all. Sometimes it returned without him. When he did come back in it very little of his idle Sunday was passed at home. The dark months of winter dragged on wearily. Grey chill clouds hung over Marken, and grey chill clouds rested on this poor Marretje's heart.
But one glad day in the early spring-time the sun shone again--when Krelis bent down over her bed with a look of real love in his bright eyes and kissed her; and then--in a half-fearful way that made her laugh at him with a weak little laugh in which there was great happiness--kissed also his little son. "As if his father's kiss could hurt this great strong boy!" she said in a tone of vast superiority: and held the little atom close to her breast with all the strength of her feeble arms. She loved with a double love this little Krelis: greatly for himself and for the strong thrilling joy of motherhood, but perhaps even more because his coming had brought the other Krelis back again into the deep chambers of her heart.
It was the prettiest of sights, presently, when she was up and about again, to see Marretje standing in front of her own door in the spring sunshine holding this famous little Krelis in her arms. Then, as now, young mothers were common enough in Marken; but there was a look of radiant happiness about Marretje--so the old people will tell you--that made her different from any young mother whom ever they saw. "Her face was as shining as the face of an angel!" one of the old women said to me--when I heard this story told in Marken on a summer day. And this same old woman told me that through that time of Marretje's great happiness Geert Thysen walked sullen: ready at any moment, without cause or reason, to fly out into what the old woman called a yellow rage.