It was nearly two in the morning when he reached home.  He stole on tiptoe into his room, but Bhani, whose sleep was light and restless when he was not there, heard him directly.  She stretched out her arms to him with a low exclamation of joy, pressed him to her bosom while he kissed her on the brow, and was for jumping up and attending to his wants.  He would not suffer it, and declared that he wanted nothing.  So she remained where she was, only following him with her eyes while he unpacked his bag and put everything in order.  He then went into his study adjoining and locked the door behind him.  Bhani heard him walking up and down for awhile, and then caught the sound of a creaking as of a drawer being opened.  She knew what that meant and heaved a deep sigh.  He was taking out the great leather book with metal-bound corners; his diary, which had become his sole confidant now that Wilhelm was dead.  Guided by the delicate tact of the Oriental, the poor simple creature divined easily enough that her sahib had cares which she could not understand and sorrows which she might not share, and yet how happy she would be if he would but deign to enlighten her ignorance, to explain it all to her and disclose his heart to her fully.  But, proud and reserved, he scorned to acknowledge his troubles to any but himself, and it was only in his diary that he unburdened himself of all that weighed upon his heart and mind.

And now he sat at his study table and wrote in the big book.

“My poor Eynhardt!  Only a year since he departed, and already it is as if he had never been.  What remains of him?  A book that bears a stranger’s name upon the title-page; a little dog that is perhaps happier now than when it belonged to him; a child like a dozen others, who will presumably grow up to be a man like a dozen other men; and a memory in my heart which will cease with the day, not far hence, when this heart shall cease to beat.  Now if Haber were to die to-day, a flourishing tract of land and a hundred people whose existence he has improved would testify aloud that his term on earth had not been in vain.

“And for all that, Eynhardt was a rare and noble character, and Haber the personification of all that is commonplace and work-a-day.  Eynhardt’s gaze was on the stars, Haber’s eyes fixed on the ground at his feet.  Wilhelm plucked that supremest fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the consciousness of our ignorance; Paul has the conceit to think himself a discoverer, to have solved enigmas.  But the noble, soaring spirit leaves no trace behind, and the dull, mediocre person plows his name in deep and enduring characters in the soil of his native land.  What was wanting in Eynhardt to make him not only a harmonious but a useful being?  Obviously only the will.  But was this want an organic one?  I do not think so, for his lofty moral beauty was perfect in proportion and balance, and this noble nature could not possibly have been born incomplete, impossible that in a being