"This is horrible, Mr. Miller," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "Who was this woman?"
"Her name," replied Mr. Miller, "was Lola Barnhelm! Doctor!" He sprang to his feet as he saw the look on Dr. Crossett's face. "Doctor!"
Dr. Crossett slowly poured himself a glass of brandy from the small decanter on the table and raised it to his lips with a hand that trembled visibly. "I--I am not quite myself to-night, sir," he continued; "I am going to ask you to excuse me. Gentlemen." He rose, a little unsteadily, and stood looking about him at the smiling faces that turned to him. "Gentlemen," he repeated, "I find that I must leave you. Will you pardon my lack of formality and allow me to say good night?"
He left the room, refusing the many anxious offers of company, for he was a rarely popular man, and there was something in the gray pallor of his face that told them that he was suffering, and jumping into a cab he gave the address of his apartment. During his long drive across Paris, for he lived at the further end of the Boulevard St. Germain, he sat motionless, struck dumb with the horror of the thing he had heard.
"Lola! Lola! Her mother." He could see them both until the tears blinded his eyes. "That she should come to this. Lola, to her child, the child that might have been his! Great God!" As he unlocked the door of his private hall his man came out to meet him.
He went slowly into his study, and was about to drop the letter carelessly on the table as the New York post-mark caught his eye. He looked again; the envelope was addressed in what looked like a child's unformed handwriting. He opened it.
"'My dear doctor,'" he read, "'if you love the doctor like I think you love him, come; he needs you. He is sick, and he looks like he wanted to die. There ain't nobody else. Please come. Excuse spelling and things and come; we need you. MARIA.'"
He caught the next steamer from Liverpool.
The old man sat in the same shabby chair, in the same little Eighth Avenue apartment where he had lived ten months before. He was dreaming again, although his eyes were open, and his dreams were not the old dreams of happy confidence.
He looked to be a broken man as he sat there, his mind and body both inert, in a half trance, half doze. On the table beside him still stood his electric apparatus, and on the mantel the little Dutch clock still ticked away soberly.