oth hands in his and swung
them to and fro.

At this moment Adele's maid entered, holding a card in her hand. "The
gentleman's in the ante-room and earnestly begs to see the Herr
Doctor."

"Tell him he may go--Why did you say I was here?"

"He didn't ask me. He gave me the card at once, in spite of my
denial--"

"Mohr! Good Heavens, what brings him here at this hour! If
Balder--excuse me, Adele, but I must see what the trouble is." He
rushed out of the door so hastily, that he upset the basket in which
Adele's little terrier was quietly sleeping. While she tried to still
the loud barking of the frightened animal, Marquard had hurried into
the ante-room with the question about Balder on his lips.

"I believe all is going on well at the tun," said Mohr. "But you must
come with me at once: some one has met with an accident--we've not a
moment to lose."

"Holloa, my friend!" replied Marquard, suddenly relapsing into his
usual indifferent tone. "If that's all, four houses beyond, on the
right hand side as you go out of the door, lives a very worthy
colleague of mine, who has little practice as yet and probably will be
more inclined at this moment to obey your philanthropic summons--"

"You'll come with me, Marquard," said Mohr in a hollow voice, which
trembled with a terrible anxiety. "Christiane has drowned herself;
we've just taken her out of the river; God only knows whether it's not
already too late--" He tottered as he wearily gasped out the words; his
powerful frame seemed ready to sink, yet he did not take the chair
Marquard pushed toward him.

"You ought to have said so at once," grumbled the latter. "That's quite
a different matter. Sit down two minutes, I only want to get my hat.
The child in there needn't know anything about it yet."

An instant after he came out of Adele's room, and not a word, not an
expression of his grave face betrayed any remembrance that he had been
so rudely interrupted in his bacchanalian levity. When they were
sitting together in the droschky, whose driver incited by Mohr's double
fare, drove at a furious pace, he said to his silent, gloomy companion:

"Among all the painful and unpleasant tasks expected of us physicians,
nothing is more sad, at least to me, than to do my duty in such a case
as this. Every one owes Nature a death. But to arouse a poor fool, who
thinks he's settled his debt and compel him to count out the whole sum
again, because he didn't pay it the first tim