our eye is fixed on what lies behind you,
feasting on the prospect of a handsome and wealthy home, kindness and
tenderness, noble and loving faces, and a happy, but alas! long-lost
existence. All the same, on you must go.--What must the result be?"

"I must stumble, you think, and fall?"

The physician's reproof had hit Paula all the harder because she could
not conceal from herself that there was much truth in it. She had come
hither on purpose to find encouragement, and these accusations troubled
even her sense of high health. Why should she submit to be taken to task
like a school-girl by this man, himself still young? If this went on she
would let him hear.... But he was speaking again, and his reply calmed
her, and strengthened her conviction that he was a true and well-meaning
friend.

"Not that perhaps," he said, "because--well, because nature has blessed
you with perfect balance, and you go forward in full self-possession as
becomes the daughter of a hero. We must not forget that it is of your
soul that I am speaking; and that maintains its innate dignity of
feeling among so much that is petty and mean."

"Then why need I fear to look back when it gives me so much comfort?"
she eagerly enquired, as she gazed in his face with fresh spirit.

"Because it may easily lead you to tread on other people's feet! That
hurts them; then they are annoyed, and they get accustomed to think
grudgingly of you--you who are more lovable than they are."

"But quite unjustly; for I am not conscious of ever having intentionally
grieved or hurt any one in my whole life."

"I know that; but you have done so unintentionally a thousand times."

"Then it would be better I should quit them altogether."

"No, and a thousand times no! The man who avoids his kind and lives in
solitude fancies he is doing some great thing and raising himself above
the level of the existence he despises. But look a little closer: it is
self-interest and egoism which drive him into the cave and the cloister.
In any case he neglects his highest duty towards humanity--or let us
say merely towards the society he belongs to--in order to win what he
believes to be his own salvation. Society is a great body, and every
individual should regard himself as a member of it, bound to serve and
succor it, and even, when necessary, to make sacrifices for it.
The greatest are not too great. But those who crave isolation,--you
yourself--nay, hear me out, for I may neve