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” I’m going to dance with Ellie now,” calls Hergesell after him. ” She’ll be a first-rate dancer when she grows up, and that I’ll swear to.”

” Think so? ” Cornelius answers, already half out.” Well, you arc a connoisseur, I’m sure. Don’t get curvature of the spine with stooping.”

He nods again and goes.” Fine lad,” he thinks as he shuts the door.” Student of engineering. Knows what he’s bound for, got a good clear head, and so well set up and pleasant too.” And again paternal envy rises as he compares his poor Bert’s status with this young man’s, which he puts in the rosiest light that his son’s may look the darker. Thus he sets out on his evening walk.

He goes up the avenue, crosses the bridge, and walks along the bank on the other side as far as the next bridge but one. The air is wet and cold, with a little snow now and then. He turns up his coat-collar and slips the crook of his cane over the arm behind his back. Now and then he ventilates his lungs with a long deep breath of the night air. As usual when he walks, his mind reverts to h is professional preoccupations, he thinks about his lectures and the things he means to say tomorrow about Philip’s struggle against the Germanic revolution, things steeped in melancholy and penetratingly just. Above all just, he thinks. For in one’s dealings with the young it behoves one to display the scientific spirit, to exhibit the principles of enlightenment—not only for purposes of mental discipline, but on the human and individual side, in order not to wound them or indirectly offend their political sensibilities; particularly in these days, when there is so much tinder in the air, opinions are so frightfully split up and chaotic, and you may so easily incur attacks from one party or the other, or even give rise to scandal, by taking sides on a point of history.” And taking sides is unhistoric anyhow,” so he muses.” Only justice, only impartiality is historic.” And could not, properly considered, be otherwise…. For justice can have nothing of youthful fire and blithe, fresh, loyal conviction. It is by nature melancholy. And, being so, has secret affinity with the lost cause and the forlorn hope rather than with the fresh and blithe and loyal—perhaps this affinity is its very essence and without it it would not exist at all! …” And is there then no such thing as justice? ” the Professor asks himself, and ponders the question so deeply that he absently posts his letters in the next box and turns round to go home. This thought of his is unsettling and disturbing to the scientific mind—but is it not after all itself scientific, psychological, conscientious, and therefore to be accepted without prejudice, no matter how upsetting? In the midst of which musings Dr. Cornelius finds himself back at his own door.

On the outer threshold stands Xaver, and seems to be looking for him.

” Herr Professor,” says Xaver, tossing back his hair, “go upstairs to Ellie straight off. She’s in a bad way.”

” What’s the matter? ” asks Cornelius in alarm.”
Is she ill? “

” No-o, not to say ill,” answers Xaver.” She’s just in a bad way and crying fit to bust her little heart. It’s along o’ that chap with the shirt-front that danced with her—Herr Hergesell. She couldn’t be got to go upstairs peaceably, not at no price at all, and she’s b’en crying bucketfuls.”

” Nonsense,” says the Professor, who has entered and is tossing off his things in the cloak-room. He says no more; opens the glass door and without a glance at the guests turns swiftly to the stairs. Takes them two at a time, crosses the upper hall and the small room leading into the nursery. Xaver follows at his heels, but stops at the nursery door.