“This is a serious beginning,” said Paula.  “Your reproof would seem to imply that I have done you or some one else a wrong.”

“If only you had!” exclaimed he.  “No, you have not sinned against us in any way.—­’I am as I am’ is what you think of yourself; and what do you care for others?”

“That must depend on whom you mean by ‘others!’”

“Nothing less than all and each of those with whom you live—­here, in this house, in this town, in this world.  To you they are mere air—­or less; for the air is a tangible thing that can fill a ship’s sails and drive it against the stream, whose varying nature can bring comfort or suffering to your body.”

“My world is within!” said Paula, laying her hand on her heart.

“Very true.  And all creation may find room there; for what cannot the human heart, as it is called, contain!  The more we require it to take and keep, the more ready it is to hold it.  It is unsafe to let the lock rust; for, if once it has grown stiff, when we want to open it no pulling and wrenching will avail.  And besides—­but I do not want to grieve you.—­You have a habit of only looking backwards. . . .”

“And what that is pleasurable lies before me?  Your blame is harsh and at the same time unjust.—­Indeed, and how can you tell which way I look?”

“Because I have watched you with the eye of a friend.  In truth, Paula, you have forgotten how to look around and forward.  The life which lies behind you and which you have lost is all your world.  I once showed you on a fragmentary papyrus that belonged to my foster father, Horus Apollo, a heathen demon represented as going forwards, while his head was turned on his neck so that the face and eyes looked behind him.”

“I remember it perfectly.”

Well, you have long been just like him.  ‘All things move,’ says Heraclitus, so you are forced to float onwards with the great stream; or, to vary the image, you must walk forwards on the high-road of life towards the common goal; but your eye is fixed on what lies behind you, feasting on the prospect of a handsome and wealthy home, kindness and tenderness, noble and loving faces, and a happy, but alas! long-lost existence.  All the same, on you must go.—­What must the result be?”

“I must stumble, you think, and fall?”

The physician’s reproof had hit Paula all the harder because she could not conceal from herself that there was much truth in it.  She had come hither on purpose to find encouragement, and these accusations troubled even her sense of high health.  Why should she submit to be taken to task like a school-girl by this man, himself still young?  If this went on she would let him hear. . . .  But he was speaking again, and his reply calmed her, and strengthened her conviction that he was a true and well-meaning friend.

“Not that perhaps,” he said, “because—­well, because nature has blessed you with perfect balance, and you go forward in full self-possession as becomes the daughter of a hero.  We must not forget that it is of your soul that I am speaking; and that maintains its innate dignity of feeling among so much that is petty and mean.”