Poor Reinhart! He certainly was a brilliant fellow. Even the German Professors overlooked his English origin, and felt proud of him. Probably they argued that if he was born in Yorkshire, it was not his fault. And, besides, as the name showed, his family, no matter where they had since strayed, must have been, at some period of the past, true children of the Fatherland. As far as he was concerned, he seemed to have very little attachment for his native country. Indeed, he never evinced very much of an attachment for any place or any body. We had been together the greater part of ten years. He possessed a singular influence over me. I hardly know what I would not have done for Reinhart. But he was in disposition not the least demonstrative; and whether he ever saw any attraction in me, I can not tell. I simply imagined so, because time wore away without drifting us apart. A profound interest in metaphysics absorbed his whole being; and through this channel he had crept into the good graces of the college authorities. During his long study upon this subject, he had woven about himself all the labyrinthine meshes of the subtile German philosophy. Though only a tutor of twenty-five, the doctors of metaphysics touched their hats to him; all the students bowed before him; and I—I felt sorry for him. Why? I can hardly tell. But he had grown thin and pale and nervous within the last year; and I could not help wishing that all Germany was as ignorant of psychology as in the days when the Suabians danced their dryad dances upon the very spot where now the great University lifted up its towers—this great University whose walls were built not of stone from the quarry, but of the labors of many lives, some of whose proudest pinnacles, reaching into a light of dazzling splendor, had been reared only by the everlasting sacrifice of reason. A vague idea had floated into my mind, but so very terrible it was that I had never dared acknowledge its existence even to myself; nevertheless, it oppressed me constantly. Finally, it grew into such a burden that I could bear it no longer, and so made up my mind to do what little I could to relieve myself at any rate. A plan occurred to me whereby I might accomplish my chief design, which was to draw him away from this study that was consuming him; to draw him away from his myriad theories into life. But before I had said a word, while I was still meditating how it could best be done, Reinhart settled the trouble himself.