"Too late--to go. I left word at home that my servant needn't expect me. As I fortunately have no wife, I'll for once be as comfortable as other married men and sleep for one night without being disturbed by domestic troubles or by other people's. Here I'm no doctor, here I'm a man and may be permitted to act like one." He threw away his cigar and tenderly approaching the young girl, took both hands in his and swung them to and fro. At this moment Adèle's maid entered, holding a card in her hand. "The gentleman's in the ante-room and earnestly begs to see the Herr Doctor." "Tell him he may go--Why did you say I was here?" "He didn't ask me. He gave me the card at once, in spite of my denial--" "Mohr! Good Heavens, what brings him here at this hour! If Balder--excuse me, Adèle, but I must see what the trouble is." He rushed out of the door so hastily, that he upset the basket in which Adèle's little terrier was quietly sleeping. While she tried to still the loud barking of the frightened animal, Marquard had hurried into the ante-room with the question about Balder on his lips. "I believe all is going on well at the tun," said Mohr. "But you must come with me at once: some one has met with an accident--we've not a moment to lose." "Holloa, my friend!" replied Marquard, suddenly relapsing into his usual indifferent tone. "If that's all, four houses beyond, on the right hand side as you go out of the door, lives a very worthy colleague of mine, who has little practice as yet and probably will be more inclined at this moment to obey your philanthropic summons--" "You'll come with me, Marquard," said Mohr in a hollow voice, which trembled with a terrible anxiety. "Christiane has drowned herself; we've just taken her out of the river; God only knows whether it's not already too late--" He tottered as he wearily gasped out the words; his powerful frame seemed ready to sink, yet he did not take the chair Marquard pushed toward him. "You ought to have said so at once," grumbled the latter. "That's quite a different matter. Sit down two minutes, I only want to get my hat. The child in there needn't know anything about it yet." An instant after he came out of Adèle's room, and not a word, not an expression of his grave face betrayed any remembrance that he had been so rudely interrupted in his bacchanalian levity. When they were sitting together in the droschky, whose driver incited by Mohr's double fare, drove at a furious pace, he said to his silent, gloomy companion: