know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor. You — a doctor — sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your patients! In another three or four years you won’t get up for your patients... But hang it all, that’s not the point!... You are going to spend to-night in the landlady’s flat here. (Hard work I’ve had to persuade her!) And I’ll be in the kitchen. So here’s a chance for you to get to know her better... It’s not as you think! There’s not a trace of anything of the sort, brother...!”

“But I don’t think!”

“Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue... and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that’s