morous eagerness.

'"Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all
sorts of doubts. "A man!"

'"Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned to me,
became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said slowly,
"Well--I am a man too."

'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.

'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head would
disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a sympathetic
growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his
legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with his
elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers together.

'"I understand very well. He is romantic."

'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled to
find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so much a
medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in an arm-chair
before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one
side--that it seemed natural to ask--

'"What's good for it?"

'He lifted up a long forefinger.

'"There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being ourselves
cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart rap. The case
which he had made to look so simple before became if possible still
simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. "Yes," said I,
"strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to
live."

'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja! ja! In
general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How to be!
Ach! How to be."

'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.

'"We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This
magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it;
but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so,
and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up, then down. . . .
"He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil--and every time he
shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow--so fine as he can
never be. . . . In a dream. . . ."

'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it rel