Calmly and carefully, with the precision he would exercise if recounting the assets of one of his companies, he went through the full history of recent events. It is not necessary to repeat his statements here. Karl, when I met him, was more explicit, because he explained causes as well as effects. Grier asked my help as a friend and trustworthy counsellor. My mission was to win his son back to a more rational view of life. As in many another desperate plight, of nations as well as individuals, the _status quo ante_ was the one desirable solution of the difficulty. I promised to co-operate to the best of my ability, and I was pleased then to think, as I am now to know, that my distressed friend quitted me in a more hopeful mood than he had experienced during the previous month. It was no child’s task he imposed. A week earlier Karl had promised his father, on his word of honor, that he would commit no rash or desperate act until four weeks had passed. Seven days had gone already, and the extraordinary circumstances which lay behind that sinister promise were more potent than ever. “Young fool!” the cynic may mutter, but even a cynic can be asked to suspend judgment until he has heard the facts. Well, Grier had gone. I was going out for a light supper at a quiet restaurant--the full-dress magnificence of the hotel dining-rooms was distasteful to an Ishmael in tweed--when a waiter came with a card: “Mr. Karl Grier!” Honestly, it did not occur to me at once how Karl became aware of my presence, in view of his father’s assurance that the telegram to Heidelberg was an absolute secret. Every man has his limitations, and the use of a sixth sense in the ordinary affairs of life was ever new to me. Nevertheless, here was Karl himself, and his appearance gave me a shock productive of that imaginary shakiness which elderly ladies of considerable weight describe when they say: “You might have knocked me down with a feather!” Light literature, helped by the stage, must have created a lean, hollow-eyed, somewhat consumptive type of person when the ravages of passion, aided and abetted by darkly mysterious natural attributes, come to be portrayed. Of course, I last saw Karl in the heyday of youth and physical perfection, when face and figure might have served Phidias as model for the sculpture of Helios, the sungod. I am not exaggerating. Even the famous Greek, contemplating some chryselephantine marvel, found no higher ideal than the human form at its best, and nature, having determined to break the fetters of that long-imprisoned extra sense, took good care to select a notable subject for its display.