Johanna had no answer ready. His insolence shook her self-control. Voss laughed again, and took no notice of the impression made by his words. He spoke of the progress of his studies: he had worked for two semesters, and was as far advanced as others at the end of six. The professors were saying excellent things of him. He considered all that part of medical knowledge that could be directly acquired mere child’s play. No man of normal mind and decent industry should need more than eighteen months to master it. After that, to be sure, the paths divided. On one were artisans, dilettanti, mere professionals, and charlatans; on the other were great brains and spirits, pioneers and illustrious discoverers. At first surgery had attracted him, but that attraction had been brief. It was the merest butchery. He would refuse to depend wholly on knife and saw, and at all crucial moments of practice to submit to the dictates of a professional diagnostician, with nothing left him but whether the butcher would turn out to be an executioner or not. What attracted him inordinately was psychiatry. In it mystery was heaped on mystery. Unexplored and undiscovered countries stretched out there--great epidemics of the soul, illnesses of the sexes, deep-rooted maladies of whole nations, a ghostly chase between heaven and earth, new proofs of psychical bonds that stretched from millennium to millennium as well as from man to man, the discovery of whose nature would make the whole structure of science totter. Johanna was repelled. One couldn’t go much further in the way of boasting. His voice, which constantly passed from falsetto to bass, like a young bird thudding awkwardly between two walls, gave her a physical pain. She murmured a polite formula of agreement, and gave him her hand in farewell. Even this she hated to do. “Stay!” he said commandingly. She threw back her head and looked at him in astonishment. Now he begged. “Do stay! You always leave in such a mood that the minute you are outside I’m tempted to hang myself.” Johanna changed colour and wrinkled her childlike forehead. “Will you kindly tell me what you want of me?” “That is a question of remarkably--shall we call it innocent frankness? What I want would seem to be sufficiently clear. Or can you accuse me of a lack of plain speaking? Am I a very deft and crafty wooer? I should rather expect you to reprove me for my impetuousness; that would be reasonable. But I cannot play at games; I have no skill in sinuous approaches. I cannot symbolize my feelings through flowers, nor have I learned to set springs of words or feign a bait upon the waters or make sweetish speeches. If I could do these things I might be more certain of reaching my goal. But I have no time; my time is limited, Fräulein Johanna. My life is crystallizing to a catastrophic point. Its great decision is at hand!”