I, too, saw him nearly every day. He seemed to be fond of my company; of playing chess with me, or discussing metaphysics. Sometimes Althea was present at these arguments, in which I always took the idealistic side. But the little college had only armed me with Bain and Locke and Mill; and it may be imagined what a poor defence I could make with these against the German doctor, with his volumes of metaphysical realism and his knowledge of what Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, and other defenders of us from the flesh could say on my side. Nevertheless, I sometimes appeared to have my victories. Althea was judge; and one day I well remember, when we were discussing the localization of emotion or of volition in the brain: “Prove to me, if you may, even that every thought and hope and feeling of mankind is accompanied always by the same change in the same part of the cerebral tissue!” cried I. “Yet that physical change _is_ not the soul-passion, but the effect of it upon the body; the mere trace in the brain of its passage, like the furrow of a ship upon the sea.” And I looked at Althea, who smiled upon me. “But if,” said the doctor, “by the physical movement I produce the psychical passion? by the change of the brain-atoms _cause_ the act of will? by a mere bit of glass-and-iron mechanism set _first_ in motion, I make the prayer, or thought, or love, _follow_, in plain succession, to the machine’s movement, on every soul that comes within its sphere--will you then say that the metaphor of ship and wake is a good one, when it is the wake that _precedes_ the ship?” “No,” said I, smiling. “Then come to my house to-night,” said the doctor; “unless,” he added with a sneer, “you are afraid to take such risks before your skating party.” And then I saw Althea’s lips grow bloodless, and my heart swelled within me. “I will come,” I muttered, without a smile. “When?” said the professor. “Now.” Althea suddenly ran between us. “You will not hurt him?” she said, appealingly to him. “Remember, oh, remember what he has before him!” And here Althea burst into a passion of weeping, and I looked in wild bewilderment from her to him. “I vill go,” said the doctor to me. “I vill leafe you to gonsole her.” He spoke in his stronger German accent, and as he went out he beckoned me to the door. His sneer was now a leer, and he said: “I vould kiss her there, if I vere you.” I slammed the door in his face, and when I turned back to Althea her passion of tears had not ceased, and her beautiful bright hair lay in masses over the poor, shabby desk. I did kiss her, on her soft face where the tears were. I did not dare to kiss her lips, though I think I could have done it before I had known this doctor. She checked her tears at once. “Now I must go to the doctor’s,” I said. “Don’t be afraid; he can do me or my soul no harm; and remember to-morrow night.” I saw Althea’s lips blanch again at this; but she looked at me with dry eyes, and I left her.