ing declined the offers his friends made to
accompany him home. They all wished him "Farewell."

"Die well, would be a better wish," replied Dorfling, and with these
strange words in their ears they left him.

Schrotter and Wilhelm went a part of the way with Paul, who had the
furthest to go. For a little while he was silent, then he broke out:

"I declare this is beyond my comprehension. The whole time I was there
I felt as if I were in a vault with a lot of ghosts. You, Herr Doctor,
were the only living being among them; I breathed again when I heard
you talking. If I had not head the sounds from next door, and had not
had the realities of our dinner before me, I should have thought I was
dreaming."

"What has put you out so, my dear Paul?" said Wilhelm.

"What! Are you men of flesh and blood? Are you really alive? There we
sat for four mortal hours, and the talk was wearisome to a degree,
never one sensible word."

"Now! now!" protested Schrotter.

"Herr Doctor, forgive me, but I must repeat it, never one sensible
word. Do you call Dorfling's 'Philosophy of Deliverance' sensible? or,
Wilhelm, your philosophy of self-culture, which, with all deference to
you, I call philosophical onanism? Only six men, two of them under
thirty-five, and the whole blessed evening not one word about either
pleasure or love."

They had come to the place where Friedrichstrasse and Leipzigerstrasse
cross each other; and Schrotter signed to them to look toward the left
corner. There under a gas lamp they saw Barinskoi in earnest
conversation with a woman.

"Yes, look at him! That brute is still the most reasonable among all
your philosophics. He has his method of sponging, and enjoys himself
according to the category of Aristotle. But your metaphysics--"

"What do you really want, Paul?"

"Well, I want you all to have to do for once with practical life, with
two hundred workmen to pay and ten thousand acres of land to see after;
and artificial manures and the price of corn to worry you; then perhaps
you would take a little less interest as to whether the soul was a
phenomenon or an india-rubber ball, or whether men were magnets or
cogwheels."

Wilhelm only smiled. He had long ago given up trying to bring his
practical friend to ideal views. At the corner of the Kochstrasse they
separated, and Paul continued his way to the Lutzowstrasse, while
Wilhelm and Schrotter turned back.

Twenty minutes later, as Wilhelm entered his b