ago he had a
hemorrhage."

He put his pipe back into his mouth, inhaled and exhaled a cloud of
smoke, and spoke again.

"Died before we could do anything," he said. "You see, after all he
had been through, he hadn't much blood to spare. What did they want
him here for, do you know?"

"No," said Herr Haase. "But I know the Herr Baron was needing him
particularly. Was fur eine Geschichte!"

"Want to see him?" asked the young doctor.

It had happened to Herr Haase never to see a dead man before.
Therefore, among the incidents of his career, he will not fail to
remember that the progress in his socks from the one car to the
other, the atmosphere of the second car where the presence of death
was heavy on the stagnant air, and the manner in which the thin white
sheet outlined the shape beneath. A big young orderly in shabby
civilian clothes was on guard; at the doctor's order he drew down the
sheet and the dead man's face was bare. He who had slashed a helpless
conscript across the face with a whip, for whom yet any service of
his Fatherland was "good enough," showed to the shrinking Herr Haase
only a thin, still countenance from whose features the eager passion
and purpose had been wiped, leaving it resolute in peace alone.

"I I didn't know they looked like that," whispered Herr Haase.

The two homeward miles of cindery path were difficult; the sun was
tyrannical; his boots were a torment; yet Herr Haase went as in a
dream. He had seen reality; the veil of his daily preoccupations had
been rent for him; and it needed the impertinence of the
ticket-collector at the door of the station, who was unwilling to let
him out without a ticket, to restore him. That battle won, he found
himself a cab, and rattled over the stones of Thun to the hotel door.
He prepared no phrases in which to clothe his news; facts are facts
and are to be stated as facts. What he murmured to himself as he
jolted over the cobbles was quite another matter.

"Ticket, indeed!" he breathed rancorously. "And I tipped him two
marks only last Christmas!"

The Baron's car was waiting at the hotel door; the cab drew up behind
it. The cabman, of course, wanted more than his due, and didn't get
it; but the debate helped to take Herr Haase's mind still further off
his feet. He entered the cool hall of the hotel triumphantly and made
for the staircase.

"O, mein Herr!"

He turned; he had not seen the lady in the deep basket-chair just
within the door,