In the three zones

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

“Now.”

Althea suddenly ran between us. “You will not hurt him?” she said, appealingly to him. “Remember, oh, remember what he has before him!” And here Althea burst into a passion of weeping, and I looked in wild bewilderment from her to him.

“I vill go,” said the doctor to me. “I vill leafe you to gonsole her.” He spoke in his stronger German accent, and as he went out he beckoned me to the door. His sneer was now a leer, and he said:

“I vould kiss her there, if I vere you.”

I slammed the door in his face, and when I turned back to Althea her passion of tears had not ceased, and her beautiful bright hair lay in masses over the poor, shabby desk. I did kiss her, on her soft face where the tears were. I did not dare to kiss her lips, though I think I could have done it before I had known this doctor. She checked her tears at once.

“Now I must go to the doctor’s,” I said. “Don’t be afraid; he can do me or my soul no harm; and remember to-morrow night.” I saw Althea’s lips blanch again at this; but she looked at me with dry eyes, and I left her.

The winter evening was already dark, and as I went down the streets toward the river I heard the crushing of the ice over the falls. The old street where the doctor lived was quite deserted. Trade had been there in the old days, but now was nothing. Yet in the silence, coming along, I heard the whirr of steam, or, at least, the clanking of machinery and whirling wheels.

I toiled up the crazy staircase. The doctor was already in his room—in the same purple velvet he had worn before. On his study table was a smoking supper.

“I hope,” he said, “you have not supped on the way?”

“I have not,” I said. Our supper at our college table consisted of tea and cold meat and pie. The doctor’s was of oysters, sweetbreads, and wine. After it he gave me an imported cigar, and I sat in his reclining-chair and listened to him. I remember that this chair reminded me, as I sat there, of a dentist’s chair; and I good-naturedly wondered what operations he might perform on me—I helpless, passive with his tobacco and his wine.