I did not have long to wait at the door. An old servant with a careworn face opened up to me and bowed his head in silent greeting. I walked through the long and cold entrance hall and slowly ascended the wide staircase one step at a time. I had of late climbed these stairs on numerous occasions, at all hours of the day and night. Upstairs, near a bend in the banister, stood a fine plaster cast of a pensive muse who, gracefully enshrouded by her veils, had been given the attitude of leaning her chin on her hand. When the great city slept, when the light of the lamp, which the old servant carried in front of me, deep into the night, came to rest on that pure, white shape, I gazed upon it steadily in passing and tried to take with me something of the bust's lovely and eternal tranquillity behind that fateful door where... but that was all over with now, the fever had won and the coffin with the young virgin's head cradled on a white satin headrest, had been taken downstairs past this selfsame statue. The coffin had then been taken through the hallway and outside through the streets of the town. Three weeks had gone by--time enough for the grave to be covered with snow and for the cold winter sun to now be shining on it. I walked on through well-ordered rooms where beautiful pictures were hanging on the walls and flowers were arranged in window-boxes and the floor was overlaid by soft carpets. But every room I entered I found cold and uninhabitable. Door after door I opened and closed gently till I found myself standing in front of the last one leading to the last remaining room in that part of the house, a corner bedroom already well-known to me. I stood outside the door to listen for a moment as somebody inside the bedroom moved about. I knew what I was going to find in that bedroom, but I felt, nevertheless, a cold, clammy sweat breaking out on my forehead and all the nerve-endings on my skin ever so slightly beginning to tingle. Even the most case-hardened doctor is never quite hardened enough and today I was to learn the truth of that all over again.