Adela immediately declared herself ready to go, and, as Walter was standing by Alma's side, it fell to Dr. Nordstedt to conduct Fräulein von Hohenstein. He showed them through various rooms in the house, and told them how they had been enlarged to their present size from small beginnings, until he had ended by adding the present spacious wings to the original mansion. The waiting-rooms were filled with all kinds of costly _objets d'art_, mementos from grateful patients from near and far. Adela, who had chattered fast enough at first, gradually became silent, and looked up with a kind of awe at the tall, serious man who had made himself what he was. Then she cast a stolen glance at Walter. He was right to be proud of this friend, she thought, and then she wondered whether Walter possessed sufficient energy and industry to be like him. She could not but observe meanwhile that in the course of the last year Walter had grown far more manly, and at last she arrived at the conclusion that she never should suspect either Walter or Dr. Nordstedt of being doctors if she had not known about them. The image of a 'doctor' in her mind was inseparably connected with a large pair of spectacles and a strong odour of ether,--both attributes of the family physician at Rollin, and of a certain professor who had been called in at the time of her father's illness. They had hitherto been the only representatives of the medical profession known to her. "Fräulein Alma would like to see your study," Walter suddenly said to Nordstedt, who turned to the girl with a smile, and said,-- "You have seen it already, Fräulein von Rosen. It is the little room I showed you where I performed my first successful operation. When one wishes to work, any decoration around one has a disturbing influence, I think; and then, too, I like old places, and so I stayed there with my books." "For the first time I cannot agree with you," cried Adela. "Whoever has any taste for the beautiful must like to see it around him." Nordstedt laughed. "You are right," he rejoined; "but beauty incites me either to enjoyment or to dreamy revery, and neither is any assistance to hard work." "But, lest the ladies should think you a scorner of the beautiful, you must open your music-room for us," said Walter. This Nordstedt did with pleasure. He certainly was much more talkative and less reserved than usual to-day. Walter wondered whether Adela's gay humour had wrought this change. Although he was firmly convinced that he himself had entirely ceased to think of Adela, he found this suspicion far from agreeable. As they entered the music-room both the girls uttered an exclamation of delight. The furniture, the hangings, the pictures on the walls, all gave evidence of genuine taste and a fine artistic perception. "Yes, the requirements of art differ from those of labour," said Nordstedt. "Art gives beauty and must have beauty."