Warren said these last words so indistinctly that Hermann could scarcely hear them; he seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to his friend.  Then he raised the forefinger of his right hand, and after moving it slowly from right to left, in imitation of the swing of a pendulum, he placed it on the large black dot he had drawn on the sheet of paper exactly below his pendulum, and said, “Dead Stop, Absolute Repose.  Would that the end were come!”

Another and still longer interval of silence succeeded, and at last Hermann felt constrained to speak.

“How came you to make up your mind,” he said, “to return to Europe?”

“Ah, yes, to be sure,” answered Warren, hurriedly; “the story—­the foolish story—­is not ended.  In truth it has no end, as it had no beginning; it is a thing without form or purpose, and less the history of a life than of a mere journeying towards death.  Still I will finish—­following chronological order.  It does not weary you?”

“No, no; go on, my dear friend.”

“Very well.  I spent several years in the United States.  The pendulum worked well.  It came and went, to and fro, slowly along the line of Indifference, without ever transgressing as its extreme limits on either hand, Moderate Desires and Slight Troubles.  I led obscurely a contemplative life, and I was generally considered a queer character.  I fulfilled my duties, and took little heed of any one.  Whenever I had an hour at my disposal, I sought solitude in the neighboring woods, far from the town and from mankind.  I used to lie down under the big trees.  Every season in turn, spring and summer, autumn and winter, had its peculiar charm for me.  My heart, so full of bitterness, felt lightened as soon as I listened to the rustling of the foliage overhead.  The forest!  There is nothing finer in all creation.  A deep calm seemed to settle down upon me.  I was growing old.  I was forgetting.  It was about this time that, in consequence of my complete indifference to all surroundings, I acquired the habit of answering ‘Very well’ to everything that was said.  The words came so naturally that I was not aware of my continual use of them, until one day one of my fellow-teachers happened to tell me that masters and pupils alike had given me the nickname of ’Very well.’  Is it not odd that one who has never succeeded in anything should be known as ‘Very well’?

“I have only one other little adventure to relate, and I will have told all.  Then I can listen to your story.

“Last year, my journeyings brought me to the neighborhood of Elmira.  It was holiday-time.  I had nothing to do, and I had in my purse a hundred hardly earned dollars, or thereabout.  The wish seized me to revisit the scene of my joys and my sorrows.  I had not set foot in the place for more than seven years.  I was so changed that nobody could know me again; nor would I have cared much if they had.  After visiting the town and looking at my old school,