stayed. His talk was food and drink to me. He picked up my few books, and sat reading quietly to himself when he saw I was getting tired. De Quincey's "Confessions" interested him especially, and he asked if he might borrow it. He took also "Sartor Resartus." I slipped into German, to his keen delight, and told him about the Moravian Brotherhood School in the Black Forest. A sketch of the recent past I gave him too. He listened with great attention, asking occasional questions, but always with real tact, and never allowing me to tire myself.
Though it was obvious, even to my stupidity, that he regarded me rather as a "specimen" of some sort, there was heart in all he said and did. Otto Huebner poured balm into all my little wounds that afternoon, but about himself he told me hardly anything. While he drew me out, with skill and sympathy, he hid himself behind that impenetrable mystery I had already noted the previous day. I say purposely that of himself he told me "hardly anything," because one detail did escape him inadvertently. An hour later, as he was leaving, he turned his smile on me from the door. "I send you something," he said shortly. "My vife makes goot broth. I cannot do much. I have not got it."
One other thing I noticed about his visit, when towards the end, Boyde came in unexpectedly, bringing a small bunch of the yellow Spanish grapes. In his best, most charming manner he spoke with the doctor. The doctor's face, however, darkened instantly. His features, it seemed to me, froze. His manner was curt. He scarcely replied. And when he left a little later he did not include my friend in his good-bye. It puzzled me. It added to my uneasiness as well.
Boyde, who apparently had noticed nothing, explained that he had to go out again to an appointment with Davis about the Rockaway Hunt post; he did not return that night at all.
I listened to the city clocks striking midnight, one,
two, three ... he did not come. I listened to the
