ne that had
invaded the conversation. At heart he was little moved by this new
friendship, which hail begun with the word itself; he told himself that
it was only a whim of Krafft's, which would be forgotten in the
morning. But, as they stood thus on the bridge, shoulder to shoulder,
he did not understand how he could ever have taken anything this frail
creature did, amiss. At the moment, there was a clinging helplessness
about Krafft, which instinctively roused his manlier feelings. He said
to himself that he had done wrong in lightly condemning his companion;
and, impelled by this sudden burst of protectiveness, he seized the
moment, and spoke earnestly to Krafft of earnest things, of duty, not
only to one's fellows, but to oneself and one's abilities, of the
inspiring gain of unremitted endeavour.

Afterwards, they sauntered home--first to Maurice's lodging, then to
Krafft's, and once again to Maurice's. At this stage, Krafft was
frankness itself; Maurice learnt to his surprise that the slim, boyish
lad at his side was over twenty-seven years of age; that, for several
semesters, Krafft had studied medicine in Vienna, then had thrown up
this "disgusting occupation," to become a clerk in a wealthy uncle's
counting-house. From this, he had drifted into journalism, and finally,
at the instigation of Hans von Bullow, to music; he had been for two
and a half years with Bullow, on travel, and in Hamburg, and was at
present in Leipzig solely to have his "fingers put in order." His plans
for the future were many, and widely divergent. At one time, a musical
career tempted him irresistibly; every one but Schwarz--this
finger-machine, this generator of living metronomes--believed that he
could make a name for himself as a player of Chopin. At other times,
and more often, he contemplated retiring from the world and entering a
monastery. He spoke with a morbid horror--yet as if the idea of it
fascinated him--of the publicity of the concert-platform, and painted
in glowing colours a monastery he knew of, standing on a wooded hill,
not far from Vienna. He had once spent several weeks there, recovering
from an illness, and the gardens, the trimly bedded flowers, the
glancing sunlight in the utter silence of the corridors, were things he
could not forget. He had lain day for day on a garden-bench, reading
Novalis, and it still seemed to him that the wishless happiness of
those days was the greatest he had known.

Beside this, Mauri