He looked at Klutz with an encouraging smile. Then something in the young man's twitching face arrested his attention. "Do you know what I think?" he said quickly, in a different voice. "It is less a kicking that you want than a good meal. You really look as though you had had nothing to eat for a week. The difference a beefsteak would make to your views would surprise you. Come, come," he said, patting him on the shoulder, "I have been taking you too seriously. You are evidently not in your usual state. When did you have food last? What has Frau Pastor been about? And your eyelids are so red that I do believe----" Axel looked closer--"I do believe you have been crying." "Sir," began Klutz, struggling hard with a dreadful inclination to cry again, for self-pity is a very tender and tearful sentiment, "Sir----" "Let me order that beefsteak," said Axel kindly. "My cook will have it ready in ten minutes." "Sir," said Klutz, with the tremendous dignity that immediately precedes tears, "Sir, I am not to be bribed." "Well, take a cigar at least," said Axel, opening his case. "That will not corrupt you as much as the beefsteak, and will soothe you a little on your way home. For you must go home and get to bed. You are as near an illness as any man I ever saw." The tears were so near, so terribly near, that, hardly knowing what he did, and sooner than trust himself to speak, Klutz took a cigar and lit it at the match Axel held for him. His hand shook pitifully. "Now go home, my dear Klutz," said Axel very kindly. "Tell Frau Pastor to give you some food, and then get to bed. I wish you would have taken the beefsteak--here is your hat. If you like, we will talk about this nonsense later on. Believe me, it is nonsense. You will be the first to say so next week." And he ushered him out to the steps, and watched him go down them, uneasy lest he should stumble and fall, so weak did he seem to be. "What a hot wind!" he exclaimed. "You will have a dusty walk home. Go slowly. Good-night." "Poor devil," he thought, as Klutz without speaking went down the avenue into the darkness with unsteady steps, "poor young devil--the highest possible opinion of himself, and the smallest possible quantity of brains; a weak will and strong instincts; much unwholesome study of the Old Testament in Hebrew with Manske; a body twenty years old, and the finest spring I can remember filling it with all sorts of anti-parsonic longings. I believe I ought to have taken him home. He looked as though he would faint." This last thought disturbed Axel. The image of Klutz fainting into a ditch and remaining in it prostrate all night, refused to be set aside; and at last he got his hat and went down the avenue after him.