nd overflowed with sweet
confessions.

Sometimes these re-read letters did Richling good; not always. Maybe he
read them too often. It was only the very next time that the Doctor's
carriage stood before the bakery that the departing physician turned
before he reentered the vehicle, and--whatever Richling had been saying
to him--said abruptly:--

"Richling, are you falling out of love with your work?"

"Why do you ask me that?" asked the young man, coloring.

"Because I no longer see that joy of deliverance with which you entered
upon this humble calling. It seems to have passed like a lost perfume,
Richling. Have you let your toil become a task once more?"

Richling dropped his eyes and pushed the ground with the toe of his
boot.

"I didn't want you to find that out, Doctor."

"I was afraid, from the first, it would be so," said the physician.

"I don't see why you were."

"Well, I saw that the zeal with which you first laid hold of your work
was not entirely natural. It was good, but it was partly
artificial,--the more credit to you on that account. But I saw that by
and by you would have to keep it up mainly by your sense of necessity
and duty. 'That'll be the pinch,' I said; and now I see it's come. For a
long time you idealized the work; but at last its real dulness has begun
to overcome you, and you're discontented--and with a discontentment that
you can't justify, can you?"

"But I feel myself growing smaller again."

"No wonder. Why, Richling, it's the discontent makes that."

"Oh, no! The discontent makes me long to expand. I never had so much
ambition before. But what can I do here? Why, Doctor, I ought to be--I
might be"--

The physician laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"Stop, Richling. Drop those phrases and give us a healthy 'I am,' and 'I
must,' and 'I will.' Don't--_don't_ be like so many! You're not of the
many. Richling, in the first illness in which I ever attended your wife,
she watched her chance and asked me privately--implored me--not to let
her die, for your sake. I don't suppose that tortures could have wrung
from her, even if she realized it,--which I doubt,--the true reason. But
don't you feel it? It was because your moral nature needs her so badly.
Stop--let me finish. You need Mary back here now to hold you square to
your course by the tremendous power of her timid little 'Don't you
think?' and 'Doesn't it seem?'"

"Doctor," replied Richling, with a smile of expostu