"You play my song ver' nice. And that is much better than playing ze
Moonlight Sonata all wrong, my leetle friend."



3

It was a sort of invisible catastrophe.

No one else knew of it. In the day-time he himself did not believe in
it--did not, at first, think of it at all. It had all the astonishing
unreality of past pain. He went his way as usual, was arbitrary and
cocksure with his patients, and looked forward to the evening when he
could put them out of his mind altogether and give himself to his vital
work. For the hospital had become a fact. It stood equipped and
occupied, an unrecognized but actual witness to his tenacity. Other
men would get the credit. The Committee who had appointed him
consulting surgeon, not without references to his unusual youth and
their own daring break with tradition--had no suspicion that even the
fund which, in a fit of inexplicable far-seeingness they had allotted
to research, had been created under his ceaseless pressure. And not
even in his thoughts was he satirical at their expense. They had
provided the money and done what he wanted and so served their purpose.
Among his old colleagues he bore himself confidently but unobtrusively.
He could afford to pay them an apparent deference. He was going
farther than they were. His eyes were fixed on a future far beyond the
centres of their jealousies and ambitions when he would be freed from
the wasteful struggle with petty ailments and petty people, and the
last pretence of being concerned with individual life. It was a time
of respite and revision. He was young--in his profession