y.

Fred had never been bored for a whole day in his life. When he was in
Chicago or St. Louis, he went to ballgames, prize-fights, and
horse-races. When he was in Germany, he went to concerts and to the
opera. He belonged to a long list of sporting-clubs and hunting-clubs,
and was a good boxer. He had so many natural interests that he had no
affectations. At Harvard he kept away from the aesthetic circle that had
already discovered Francis Thompson. He liked no poetry but German
poetry. Physical energy was the thing he was full to the brim of, and
music was one of its natural forms of expression. He had a healthy love
of sport and art, of eating and drinking. When he was in Germany, he
scarcely knew where the soup ended and the symphony began.

V

MARCH began badly for Thea. She had a cold during the first week, and
after she got through her church duties on Sunday she had to go to bed
with tonsilitis. She was still in the boarding-house at which young
Ottenburg had called when he took her to see Mrs. Nathanmeyer. She had
stayed on there because her room, although it was inconvenient and very
small, was at the corner of the house and got the sunlight.

Since she left Mrs. Lorch, this was the first place where she had got
away from a north light. Her rooms had all been as damp and mouldy as
they were dark, with deep foundations of dirt under the carpets, and
dirty walls. In her present room there was no running water and no
clothes closet, and she had to have the dresser moved out to make room
for her piano. But there were two windows, one on the south and one on
the west, a light wall-paper with morning-glory vines, and on the floor
a clean matting. The landlady had tried to make the room look cheerful,
because it was hard to let. It was so small that Thea could keep it
clean herself, after the Hun had done her worst. She hung her dresses on
the door under a sheet, used the washstand for a dresser, slept on a
cot, and opened both the windows when she practiced. She felt less
walled in than she had in the other houses.

Wednesday was her third day in bed. The medical student who lived in the
house had been in to see her, had left some tablets and a foamy gargle,
and told her that she could probably go back to work on Monday. The
landlady stuck her head in once a day, but Thea did not encourage her
visits. The Hungarian chambermaid brought her soup and toast. She made a
sloppy pretense of putting the room in o