“I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs,” I told her.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “there’s been so many here this morning already.  It’s wonderful how people love him, all kinds of people.  No, sir, he don’t seem to be in any pain.  Two gentlemen are up there now in his room, I mean.”

She wiped her arms, which still bore traces of soap-suds, and then, with a gesture natural and unashamed, lifted the corner of her apron to her eyes.

“Do you think I could see him—­for a moment?” I asked.  “I’ve known him for a long time.”

“Why, I don’t know,” she said, “I guess so.  The doctor said he could see some, and he wants to see his friends.  That’s not strange—­he always did.  I’ll ask.  Will you tell me your name?”

I took out a card.  She held it without glancing at it, and invited me in.

I waited, unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung.  Once before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago with something of the same feelings.  But now they were greatly intensified.  Now he was dying....

The woman was descending.

“He says he wants to see you, sir,” she said rather breathlessly, and I followed her.  In the semi-darkness of the stairs I passed the three men who had been with Krebs, and when I reached the open door of his room he was alone.  I hesitated just a second, swept by the heat wave that follows sudden shyness, embarrassment, a sense of folly it is too late to avert.

Krebs was propped up with pillows.

“Well, this is good of you,” he said, and reached out his hand across the spread.  I took it, and sat down beside the shiny oak bedstead, in a chair covered with tobacco-colored plush.

“You feel better?” I asked.

“Oh, I feel all right,” he answered, with a smile.  “It’s queer, but I do.”

My eye fell upon the long line of sectional book-cases that lined one side of the room.  “Why, you’ve got quite a library here,” I observed.

“Yes, I’ve managed to get together some good books.  But there is so much to read nowadays, so much that is really good and new, a man has the hopeless feeling he can never catch up with it all.  A thousand writers and students are making contributions today where fifty years ago there was one.”

“I’ve been following your speeches, after a fashion,—­I wish I might have been able to read more of them.  Your argument interested me.  It’s new, unlike the ordinary propaganda of—­”

“Of agitators,” he supplied, with a smile.

“Of agitators,” I agreed, and tried to return his smile.  “An agitator who appears to suggest the foundations of a constructive programme and who isn’t afraid to criticise the man with a vote as well as the capitalist is an unusual phenomenon.”