“Don’t,” he answered with decision. He added an odd sentence: “It’s an esgape from self.” I remember that I couldn’t say a word to this. His kindness melted me. The struggle to keep my eyes from betraying me seemed the most idiotic yet bitter I had ever known. I could have kissed the old man’s hand, when he examined me then at once, but with a gentleness, even a tenderness, that both astonished me, yet did not astonish me at all. I felt, too, already the support of his mind and character, of his whole personality, of a rugged power in him, of generosity, true goodness, above all, of sympathy. I think he had made up his mind to treat me for nothing. No reference, in any case, was made to money; nor did I dare even to mention it myself. An operation, moreover, of any big kind, was not necessary; he thought he could save me that; he performed a small one then and there, for he had brought all that was required for it. The pain seemed nothing, his kindness made me indifferent to it. “You are brave,” he said, with a smile that seemed to me really beautiful, when it was over. “That hurt, I know.” He promised to come daily to drain the wound and so forth; he bandaged me up; a month to six weeks would see me out of bed, he hoped; he packed up his bag, but, instead of leaving the room, he then sat down deliberately and began to talk. I was too surprised, too happy, to wonder why he 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.”