send for you. I didn't ask my friend to fetch you either."
I could think of nothing else to say. His verdict had flattened me out. I was angry, besides, with Boyde, for not consulting me first, though I knew he had done the right thing. Another period of awkward silence followed, during which the doctor never moved, but stood gazing down at me. Suddenly his eye rested on the book I had been reading. He put out a hand and picked it up. He glanced through the pages of the "Gita," then began to read more carefully. A few minutes passed. He became absorbed.
"You read this?" he asked presently. "Ach was!" There was a look of keen astonishment in his eyes; his gaze searched me as though I were some strange animal. I told him enough by way of reply to explain my interest. He listened, without a word, then presently picked up his bag and hat and moved away. At the door he turned a moment. "I come again to-morrow," he said gruffly, and he was gone.
In this way Otto Huebner, with his poignant tragedy, came into my life.
That evening, with the bread and soup, there was a plate of chicken; it was not repeated often, but he had spoken to Mrs. Bernstein, I discovered, for her attitude, too, became slightly pleasanter. I spent the long evening composing a letter to McCloy, which Boyde could take down next day.... I lay thinking of that curious gruff, rude old German, whose brusqueness, I felt sure, covered a big good heart. There was mystery about him, something unusual, something pathetic and very lovable. There was power in his quietness. Despite his bluntness, there was in his atmosphere a warm kindness, a sincerity that drew me to him. Also there was a darkness, a sense of tragedy somewhere that intrigued me because I could not explain it.
It was after he was gone that I felt all this. While he was in the room I had been too troubled and upset by
his manner to feel anything but annoyance. Now that
