“I pause a moment to speak of his wife. She was a very fine woman, doubtless. Of one of the old New York families. If I mentioned the name, you’d know all about it, I’m sure. And she was religious, in a way, though her god was rather a crude one, a sort of hybrid, not of the sphinx variety exactly, but a good respectable American god. I am not cynical about it either. That god has given us much of America.... Let me describe him in a word, a line: He was a puritan who believed in hard work, righteousness and business. And he believed in kindness and purity. You see my wife, don’t you? She wanted me to be honest and upright, respectable and wealthy, and at the same time lowly and obedient--down on my knees to her deity.... She found me then an anomaly: I was honest, I was wealthy, I was upright; but I was proud and vain and consumed in myself. I had no love in my heart. You know there was John Brown to prove that a puritan can love like a blast of fire. But also, as you know, a puritan can be a peak of ice. “Now I must tell you a great joke. My patients thought me a second Jesus. Actually. And why? Because I was remarkably intuitive. I could pierce direct into their souls, and so I knew just what to say and to do to make them feel I was in full sympathy with them. Is there anything more devilish than that? I ask you. Think. To use the art of love to serve merely one’s ambition and one’s egotism. To wear the mask of Christ in order to be a great doctor. Good old American bluff, isn’t it?” He paused, and took a puff on his cigar. It was as if he had forgotten my presence. Indeed he did not seem to realize that he had dropped speaking of “Trudo” and was speaking directly of himself, in the first person. Then he went on, his voice growing warm and poignant. “My wife warned me, often. She said I had slain my soul, and was headed for a great crash. She pointed out how many of our great business-men make forced marches on success and are killed or driven insane or into a sanitarium before they are fifty. I agreed with her. But what could I do? The greatest tragedy of my life was the fact that it was a comedy. I knew all the facts, but I didn’t care a snap of my fingers. I could not feel the tragedy. I was perfectly happy on the ice--that is, if you can call it happy. Perhaps, to put it more honestly, I was neither glad nor sad, but busy, alert and keen. “Then the symptoms came. I will not enter into the details. Palpitation of the heart, for instance--a very bad symptom, as you know. You see, I had no heart; so it was just there that the gods began to make mischief. Ah, yes, I knew then that the gods I had laughed at were preparing a little doomsday for me. Man does not live by intellect alone. If thou hast two loaves of bread, sell one, and buy hyacinths for thy soul. Lord! I said those very words to myself at the time. But of what avail?