The book
of philosophy was underlined and interlined on every page, and every
margin had comment which showed a mind of the most singular simplicity,
searching wisdom, and hopeless confusion, all in one.
The Young Doctor was a man of decision, and he had whisked the little
brown-grey sufferer to his own home, and tended him there like a brother
till the danger disappeared; and behold he was rewarded for his humanity
by as quaint an experience as he had ever known. He had not
succeeded--though he tried hard--in getting at the history of his
patient's life; but he did succeed in reading the fascinating story of a
mind; for Jean Jacques, if not so voluble as of yore, had still moments
when he seemed to hypnotize himself, and his thoughts were alive in an
atmosphere of intellectual passion ill in accord with his condition.
Presently the little brown man withdrew his eyes from the window of the
Young Doctor's office and the snowy waste beyond. They had a curious red
underglow which had first come to them an evening long ago, when they
caught from the sky the reflection of a burning mill. There was distance
and the far thing in that underglow of his eyes. It had to do with the
horizon, not with the place where his feet were. It said, "Out there,
beyond, is what I go to seek, what I must find, what will be home to me."
"Well, I must be getting on," he said in a low voice to the Young Doctor,
ignoring the question which had been asked.
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