Sabine announced dinner, Doctor Graesler wanted to take his leave; but the ranger, with an exaggerated show of courtesy, refused to allow this, and so the doctor was soon sitting with the parents and the children at the family board, over which a green-shaded lamp hung from the panelled ceiling. He mentioned the imminent gathering of the Saturday Club at the casino, and, turning to Sabine, asked her whether she sometimes took part in affairs of that sort.
"Not in the last few years," she replied. "Before, when I was younger—"
And in response to the doctor's deprecatory smile she added immediately and, as it seemed to him, not insignificantly, "You know, I'm already twenty-seven."
Her father interposed a sarcastic remark about the petty pursuits of the little watering-place and began to speak animatedly of the magic of large cities and the stir of cosmopolitan life, and one gathered, as he continued, that he had been an opera-singer and had not relinquished that career until long after his marriage. While he was mentioning the names of many artists with whom he had appeared, of patrons who had esteemed him highly, and finally of doctors to whose faulty methods of treatment he, claimed to owe the premature loss of his baritone voice, he emptied one glass after another until he suddenly seemed quite exhausted and looked, all at once, like an old and worn-out man. The doctor now thought it about time to take his leave. Karl and Sabine escorted him to his carriage, and inquired anxiously as to the impression he had got of their father's condition. Although Doctor Graesler already felt competent to pronounce any serious illness out of the question, he expressed the intention of finding an opportunity for further observation and, even better, for a regular examination—without which, as a conscientious physician, he could make no definitive statement in the case.
"Doesn't it seem to you," Karl said to his sister, "that father was more talkative this evening than he has been for a long time?"
"Yes, I guess that's true," she replied in confirmation. And then, turning towards Doctor Graesler with a look of gratitude, she added, "He took to you immediately; one could see that very clearly."
The doctor made a gesture of modest deprecation, promised upon their entreaty that he would repeat his visit in the near future, and
