The doctor began his examination, and Johannes left the bed and went to stand by the window. He looked at the sunny grass and the clear sky, and at the broad chestnut leaves where the big flies sat—shining blue in the sunlight. The moaning began again with the same regularity.
A blackbird hopped through the tall grass in the garden—great red and black butterflies were hovering over the flower-beds, and there reached Johannes from out the foliage of the tallest trees the soft, coaxing coo of the wood-doves.
In the room the moaning continued—never ceasing. He had to listen to it—and it came regularly—as unpreventable as the falling drop that causes madness. In suspense he waited through each interval, and it always came again—frightful as the footstep of approaching death.
All out-of-doors was wrapped in warm, mellow sunlight. Everything was happy and basking in it. The grass-blades thrilled and the leaves sighed in the sweet warmth. Above the highest tree tops, deep in the abounding blue, a heron was soaring in peaceful flight.
Johannes could not understand—it was an enigma to him. All was so confused and dark in his soul. "How can all this be in me at the same time?" he thought.
"Is this really I? Is that my father—my own father? Mine—Johannes'?"
It was as if he spoke of a stranger. It was all a tale that he had heard. Some one had told him of Johannes, and of the house where he lived, and of the father whom he had forsaken, and who was now dying. He himself was not that one—he had heard about him. It was a sad, sad story. But it did not concern himself.
But yes—yes—he was that same Johannes!
"I do not understand the case," said Doctor Cijfer, standing up. "It is a very obscure malady."
Pluizer stepped up to Johannes.