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"You can take it on," he said; "you are still young"—which prompted Doctor Graesler to a gloomily deprecatory gesture.

He inspected the establishment from top to bottom, but found it, to his regret, even more neglected and run-down than he had feared. Nor did the few patients he encountered in the garden, in the corridors, and in the inhalation-room, serve in any way to give him the impression of being satisfied and hopeful people; nay, it even seemed to him as though mistrust, and almost enmity, lay in the glances with which they greeted their doctor. But when Graesler stood upon the little balcony which was a part of the director's private home, and let his eyes stray over the garden, and then farther, up to the pleasant valley, and as far as the gently rising hills which were wrapped in a faint fog, and speculated that somewhere at their base lay The Range, he was suddenly seized with such a passionate longing for Sabine that for the first time he recognized with absolute certainty that his feeling for her was love, and saw before him, like a magic goal, the prospect of soon standing on this very spot in close embrace with Sabine and of laying at her feet, for his companion and wife, the whole newly restored and beautified property. He had to exercise a deal of self-control in order to appear to be as yet undecided when he took leave of Director Frank; but the latter was quite indifferent to this attitude. That same evening, at The Range, Graesler thought it proper to make no mention of his visit to the establishment; on the very next day, however, he took the contractor, Adelmann, his daily table-companion at the Silver Lion, along to the sanitarium in order to get expert advice on his problem. It turned out that less costly and extensive alterations were necessary than Doctor Graesler had feared; indeed the contractor was willing to assume entire responsibility for making the establishment present an absolutely new appearance by the first of May of the following year. In the presence of the director Doctor Graesler continued to appear irresolute; but when they had departed and were alone, the contractor urged him even more decidedly to make this advantageous purchase.

That very evening—which for a change was as warm as in summer—when he was sitting on the verandah of The Range with Sabine and her parents, he began, as though casually, to tell of his conference with Doctor Frank, which he represented as having come about by accident, inasmuch as he had simply chanced to be passing