“’I am very glad to see you again, Mr. Warren.  I have inquired about you, but neither my father nor Francis could tell me what had become of you.  I want to ask you to resume the lessons you used to give me.  Perhaps you do not know where I live?  This is my address,’ and she gave me her card.

“I stammered out a few unmeaning words in reply to her invitation.  She looked at me, smiling kindly the while; but suddenly the smile vanished, and she added, ’Have you been ill, Mr. Warren?  You seem worn.’

“‘Yes,’ I answered, too glad to find an excuse for my appearance—­ ‘yes, I have been ill, and I am still suffering.’

“‘I am very sorry,’ she said, in a low voice.

“Laugh at me, Hermann—­call me an incorrigible madman; but believe me when I say that her looks conveyed to me the impression of more than common interest or civility.  A thrilling sense of pain shot through my frame.  What had I done that I should be so cruelly tried?  A mist passed before my eyes; anxiety, intemperance, sleeplessness, had made me weak.  I tottered backwards a few steps.  She turned horribly pale.  All around us was the crowd—­the careless, indifferent crowd.

“‘Come and see me soon,’ she added hastily, and left me.  I saw her get into a carriage, which she had doubtless quitted to take a walk; and when she drove past, she put her head out and looked at me with her eyes wide open—­there was an almost wildly anxious expression in them.

“I went home.  My way led me past her house—­it was a palace.  I shut myself up in my wretched hotel-room, and once more I fell to dreaming.  Ellen loved me; she admired me; she was not for ever lost to me!  The pendulum was swinging, you see, up as high as Madness.  Explain to me, if you can, how it happens that a being perfectly rational in ordinary life should at certain seasons, and, so to speak, voluntarily, be bereft of reason.  To excuse and explain my temporary insanity, I am ready to admit that the excitement to which I gave way may have been a symptom of the nervous malady which laid hold of me a few days later, and stretched me for weeks upon a bed of pain.

“As I became convalescent, reason and composure returned.  But it was too late.  In the space of two months, twenty years had passed over my head.  When I rose from my sick-bed I was as feeble and as broken-down as you see me now.  My past had been cheerless and dim, without one ray of happiness; yet that past was all my life!  Henceforward there was nothing left for me to undertake, to regret, or to desire.  The pendulum swung idly backwards and forwards on the line of Indifference.  I wonder what are the feelings of successful men—­of men who have been victorious generals, prime ministers, celebrated authors, and that sort of tiling!  Upheld by a legitimate pride, do they retire satisfied from the lists when evening conies, or do they lay down their arms as I did, disappointed and dejected, and worn out with the fierce struggle?  Can no man with impunity look into his own heart and ask himself how his life has been spent?”