CHAPTER VII.
"Are you sick, my dear George?" said Doctor Snellius, entering my room one evening.
I had not seen the doctor since we last parted so unpleasantly, and the visit of the man with the keen spectacles and the keen eyes behind them was doubly disagreeable to one who wished to avoid the gaze of every one. He must have noticed my embarrassment, for the tone of his voice was unusually soft and gentle when he spoke again, after taking his place by the fire.
"I knew it from Klaus Pinnow, who perceived that something was amiss with you, and from Paula, who has perceived nothing because you have not been near her, and who sends me to you for this reason. What is it, my friend? Your hand is hot, you look wretchedly, and you have decided fever. What is amiss?"
"I feel quite well," I answered--drawing my large hand out of the doctor's, which was small and delicate as a woman's, and with it screening my brow and eyes from the sharp spectacles--"perfectly well."
"You must then have some mental trouble, some great distress, which affects natures like yours more powerfully than severe sickness does others. Is it so?"
"You may be right there," I answered.
"And can you not tell me what it is?" asked the doctor, drawing nearer to me, and laying his small hand upon my other hand which rested on my knee.
"It is not worth talking about," I answered. "A curious story--something like one which I have read somewhere or other--about a young man who loved a beautiful woman who was a witch, and one night as he stretched out his hand to take hers she had vanished--out of the chimney--to the Blocksberg--to the devil, I suppose!"
And I sprang up, paced the room for a few minutes in great agitation, and then threw myself again into my chair.