climbed into the carriage. Brother and sister both remained standing at the edge of the road, gazing after him. In the cool dusk, beneath a starry sky, the doctor rode homeward. Sabine's confidence in him filled him with contentment, all the sweeter as he allowed himself to think that her confidence was due not to his professional abilities alone. He knew very well that, particularly in recent years, he had become more tired and indifferent—had, indeed, often been positively deficient in the merest human sympathy with his patients and their ills. And for the first time in many a day there dawned upon him again the nobleness of a profession which he had chosen with enthusiasm in the years of his youth, but of which it was certain that he had not at all times, and in a like manner, proved himself truly worthy.
IV
The next day when Doctor Graesler opened the door to his waiting-room, he saw to his amazement, sitting among the other patients, Herr Schleheim; who, being the first arrival, immediately followed the doctor into his consultation-room. First of all, the singer demanded that his family never be informed of his visit, and on having exacted this promise he was prepared at once to recite his complaints and to submit to an examination. Doctor Graesler was unable to discover any serious physical ailment, but there was unmistakably present a deep spiritual depression, not surprising in a man who, while still in the prime of life, had been forced to abandon an outwardly brilliant profession for which he was incapable of finding sufficient compensation either in domestic concerns and love of family or in any inner wealth. It visibly benefited him to be able, for once, thoroughly to unbosom himself to someone. And so he took it very kindly of the doctor when the latter explained that he could really not at all consider him as a patient, and with humorous adroitness besought him for permission to drop in at The Range on his occasional strolls, to chat with him there.
When, on the following Sunday morning, he was making use of this permission, he at first came upon the singer alone and was immediately informed by him that he had after all thought it wiser to apprise the "family"—as he always, thus collectively, referred to them—of the examination which had taken place and of its
