"Who, Siegfried? Well, no. He used to be the flower of the
Norwegian youth in my day, and he's rather an exception, even now.
He has retrograded, though. The bonds of the soil have tightened
on him, I fancy."

"Siegfried? Come, that's rather good, Wyllis. He looks like
a dragon-slayer. What is it that makes him so different from the
others? I can talk to him; he seems quite like a human being."

"Well," said Wyllis, meditatively, "I don't read Bourget
as much as my cultured sister, and I'm not so well up in analysis,
but I fancy it's because one keeps cherishing a perfectly
unwarranted suspicion that under that big, hulking anatomy of his,
he may conceal a soul somewhere. Nicht wahr?"

"Something like that," said Margaret, thoughtfully, "except
that it's more than a suspicion, and it isn't groundless. He has
one, and he makes it known, somehow, without speaking."

"I always have my doubts about loquacious souls," Wyllis
remarked, with the unbelieving smile that had grown habitual with
him.

Margaret went on, not heeding the interruption. "I knew it
from the first, when he told me about the suicide of his cousin,
the Bernstein boy. That kind of blunt pathos can't be summoned at
will in anybody. The earlier novelists rose to it, sometimes,
unconsciously. But last night when I sang for him I was doubly
sure. Oh, I haven't told you about that yet! Better light your