charm your friends, whilst you frequently disarm your foes, there must be a hidden something in your soul that gnaws away at your vitals, a deep, dark under-current of grief and pain. Am I right? You know that I am not asking the question from idle curiosity." "I know it," replied Bertram; "and therefore I answer: you are right and yet not right, or right only if you hold me responsible for the effect of a cause I was guiltless of." "You answer in enigmas, my friend." "Let me try a metaphor. Say, somebody is compelled to live in a house, in which the architect made some grave mistake at the laying of the foundations, or at some important period or other of its erection. The tenant is a quiet, steady man, who keeps the house in good order; then comes a storm, and the ill-constructed building is terribly shaken and strained. The steady-going tenant repairs the damage as best he can, and things go on fairly enough for a time, a long time, until there comes another and a worse storm, which makes the whole house topple together over his head." The doctor's dark eyes had been dwelling searchingly and sympathisingly upon the speaker. Now he said-- "I think I understand your metaphor. Of course, it only meets a portion of the case. I happen to know the house in question extremely well. True there was one weak point in it from the beginning, in spite of its general excellent construction, but ..." "But me no buts," interrupted Bertram eagerly. "Given the one weak point, and all the rest naturally follows. I surely need not point out to such a faithful disciple of Spinoza's, that thought and expansion are but attributes of one and the same substance, that there is no physiological case that does not, rightly viewed, turn to a psychological one; that so excitable a heart as mine must needs be impressed by things more than other hearts whose bands do not snap, happen what may, and notwithstanding all the storms of Fate. Or are you not sure that, if you had had to examine the hearts of Werther or of Eduard in the 'Elective Affinities,' you would have found things undreamed of by æesthetic philosophers? I belong to the same race. I neither glory in this, nor do I blush for it; I simply state a fact, a fact which embodies my fate, before whose power I bow, or rather whose power bows me down in spite of my resistance. For, however much I may by disposition belong to the last century, yet I am also a citizen of our own time; nor can I be deaf to its bidding. I know full well that modern man can no longer live and die exclusively for his private joys and sorrows; I know full well that I have a fatherland whose fame, honour, and greatness I am bound to hold sacred, and to which I am indebted as long as a breath stirs within me. I know it, and I believe that I have proved it according to my strength, both formerly and again now, when ..."