OCTOR 
 
 HfjdenhoffS 
 
 PROCESS 
 
 BBWrn* BEL14W' 
 
 
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 10 
 
 "A 
 been 
 
 sidere 
 
 Back- 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
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 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
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 Savagedom, Slavedom, Serfdom, Wai 
 Freedom. By J. Morrison Dai 
 Paper is.. Cloth, as. 
 
 No. 4.— MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER 
 Edward Bellamy. 
 
 No. 5.— PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
 Henry George, is.. Limp Cloth, 
 Cabinet Edition, 2s. 6d. 
 
 ublished by WILLIAM REEVES, 185, Fleet ; 
 

 ''c^aCS 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PS 1086.D6 1890 
 
 Doctor Heidenhoff s process. 
 
 3 1924 022 016 046 
 
^■THE BELLAMY SERIES."— No. 2. 
 
 Doctor 
 
 Heidenhoff's 
 
 Process. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD BELLAMY. 
 
 Author of "Looking Backward," ' A Nautuchst Idyl." 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STKLLT, L.C. 
 
NEW TEMPLE PRESS. 
 
 185, FLEET STREET, 
 
 LONDON, E.G. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 The hand of the clock, fastened up on the white 
 wall of the conference room, just over the framed 
 card bearing the words " Stand up for Jesus," 
 and between two other similar cards, respectively 
 bearing the sentences " Come Unto Me," and 
 " The Wonderful the Counselor," pointed to ten 
 minutes of nine. As was usual at this period of 
 Newville prayer-meetings, a prolonged pause had 
 supervened. The regular standbyes had all taken 
 their usual part, and for any one else to speak or 
 pray would have been about as irregular as for one 
 of the regulars to fail in doing so. For the atten- 
 dants at Newville prayer-meetings were strictly 
 divided into the two classes of speakers and 
 listeners, and, except during revivals or times of 
 special interest, the distinction was scrupulousl}' 
 observed. 
 
 Deacon Tuttle had spoken and prayed. Deacon 
 Miller had prayed and spoken, Brother Hunt had 
 
r, PR, heidenhoff's process, 
 
 amplified a point in last Sunday's sermon, Brother 
 Taylor had called attention to a recent sudden 
 death in the village as a warning to sinners, and 
 Sister Morris had prayed twice, the second time, it 
 must be admitted, with a certain perceptible 
 petulance of tone, as if willing to have it understood 
 that she was doing more than ought to be expected 
 of her. But while it was extremely improbable 
 that any others of the twenty or thirty persons 
 assembled would feel called on to break the silence, 
 though it stretched to the crack of doom, yet, on 
 the other hand, to close the meeting before the mill 
 bell had stuck nine, would have been regarded 
 as a dangerous innovation. Accordingly it only 
 remained to wait in decorous silence during the 
 remaining ten minutes. 
 
 The clock ticked on with that judicial intonation 
 characteristic of time-pieces that measure sacred 
 time and wasted opportunities. At intervals the 
 pastor, with an innocent a,ffectation of having just 
 observed the silence, would remark : " There is yet 
 opportunity. . . . Time is passing, brethren. 
 . Any brother or sister. . . We shall be glad 
 to hear from any one." Farmer Bragg, tired with 
 his day's hoeing, snored quietly in the corner of a 
 seat. Mrs. Parker dropped a hymn-book. Little 
 Tommy Blake, who had fallen over while nap- 
 ping and hit his nose, sniveled under his breath. 
 Madeline Brand, as she sat at the melodeon below 
 the minister's desk, stifled a small yawn with her 
 pretty fingers. A June bug boomed through the 
 open window and circled routid Deacon Tuttle's 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 7 
 
 head, affecting that good man with the solicitude 
 characteristic of bald-headed persons when buzzing 
 things are about. Next it made' a dive at Madeline, 
 attracted perhaps by her shining eyes, and the little 
 gesture of panic with which she evaded it was the 
 prettiest thing in the world ; at least, so it seemed 
 to Henry Burr, a broad-shouldered, young fellow on 
 the back seat, whose strong, serious face is just now 
 lit up by a pleasant smile. 
 
 Mr. Lewis, the minister, being seated directly 
 under the clock, can not see it without turning 
 around, wherein the audience has an advantage of 
 him, which it makes full use of. Indeed, so closely 
 is the general attention concentrated upon the time- 
 piece, that a stranger might draw the mistaken 
 inference that this was the object for whose worship 
 the little company had gathered. Finally, making 
 a slight concession of etiquette to curiosity, Mr. 
 Lewis turns and looks up at the clock, and, again 
 facing the people, observes, with the air of commu- 
 nicating a piece of intelligence, " There are yet a 
 few moments." 
 
 In fact, and not to put too fine a point upon it, 
 there are five minutes left, and the young men on 
 the back seats, who attend prayer-meetings to go 
 home with the girls, are experiencing increasing 
 qualms of alternate hope and fear as the moment 
 draws near whey they shall put their fortune to the 
 test, and win or lose it all. As they furtively 
 glance over at the girls, how formidable they look, 
 how superior to common affections, how serenely 
 and icily indifferent, as if the existence of youth of 
 
8 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 the other sex in their vicinity at that moment was 
 the thought furthest from their minds ! How pre- 
 sumptuous, how audacious, to those youth them- 
 selves now appears the design, a little while ago so 
 jauntily entertained, of accompanying these dainty 
 beings home, how weak and inadequate the phrases 
 of request v/hich they had framed wherewith to 
 accost them. Madeline Brand is looking parti- 
 cularly grave, as becomes a young lady who knows 
 that she has three would-be escorts waiting for her 
 just outside the church door, not to count one or 
 two within, between whose conflicting claims she 
 has only five minutes more to make up her mind. 
 
 The minister had taken up his hymn-book, and 
 was turning over the leaves to selec't the closing 
 hymn, when some one rose in the back part of 
 the room. Every head turned as if pulled by one 
 wire to see who it was, and Deacon Tuttle put on 
 his spectacles to inspect more closely this dilatory 
 person who was moved to exhortation at so un- 
 necessary a time. 
 
 It was George Bayley, a young man of good 
 education, excellent training, and once of great 
 promise, but of most unfortunate recent experi- 
 ence. About a year previous he had embezzled a 
 small amount of the funds of a corporation in 
 Newville, of which he was paymaster, for the pur- 
 pose of ra-ising money for a pressing emergency. 
 Various circumstances showed that his repentance 
 had been poignant, even before his theft was dis- 
 covered. He had reimbursed the corporation, 
 and there was no prosecution, because his dis- 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS. g 
 
 honest act had been no part of generally vicious 
 habits, but a single unaccountable deflection from 
 rectitude. The evident intensity of his remorse 
 had excited general sympathy, and, when Parker, 
 the village druggist, gave him employment as 
 clerk, the act was generally applauded, and all 
 the village folk had endeavored with one accord, 
 by a friendly and hearty manner, to make him 
 feel that they were dispos|d to forget the past and 
 help him to begin life over again. He had been 
 converted at a revival the previous winter, but 
 was counted to have backslidden of late and be- 
 come indifferent to religion. He looked badly. 
 His face was exceedingly pale, and his eyes were 
 sunken. But these symptoms of mental sick- 
 ness were dominated by an expression of singular 
 peece and profound calm. He had the look 
 of one whom, after a wasting illness, the fever 
 has finally left ; of one who has struggled 
 hard, but whose struggle is over. And his voice, 
 when he began to speak, was very soft and 
 clear. 
 
 " If it will not be too great an inconvenience," 
 he said, " I should like to keep you a few minutes 
 while I talk about myself a little. You remember, 
 perhaps, that I professed to be converted last 
 winter. Since then I am aware that I have shown 
 a lack of interest in religious matters, which has 
 certainly justified you in supposing that I was 
 either hasty or insincere in my profession. I have 
 made my arrangements to leave you soon, and 
 should be sorry to have that impression remain 
 
lO DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 on the minds of my friends. Hasty I may have 
 been but not insincere. Perhaps you will excuse 
 me if I refer to an unpleasant subject, but I can 
 make my meaning clearer by reviewing a little of 
 my unfortunate history." 
 
 The suavity with which he apologized for allud- 
 ing to his own ruin, as if he had' passed beyond 
 the point of any personal feeling in the matter, 
 had something uncanny and creepy in its effect 
 on the listeners, as if they heard a dead soul 
 speaking through living lips. 
 
 "After my disgrace," pursued the young man 
 in the same quietly explanatory tone, " the way 
 I felt about myself was very much, I presume, as 
 a mechanic feels^ who by an unlucky stroke has 
 hopelessly spoiled the looks of a piece of work, 
 which he nevertheless has got to go on and com- 
 plete as best be can. Now you know that in 
 order to find any pleasure in his work, the workman 
 must be able to take a certain amount of pride in 
 it. Nothing is more disheartening for him than to 
 have to keep on with a job with which he must be 
 disgusted every time he returns to it, every time 
 his eye glances it over. Do I make my meaning 
 clear ? I felt like that beaten crew in last week's 
 regatta, which, when it saw itself hopelessly dis- 
 tanced at the very outset, had no pluck to row 
 out the race, but just pulled ashore and went 
 home. 
 
 " Why, I remember when I was a little boy in 
 school, and one day made a big blot on the very 
 first page of my new copy-book, that I didn't have 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. II 
 
 the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well 
 how I teased my father to buy me a new book, and 
 cried and sulked until he finally took his knife 
 and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was 
 comforted and took heart, and I believe I finished 
 that copy-book so well that the teacher gave me 
 the prize. 
 
 " Now you see, don't you," he continued, the 
 ghost of a smile glimmering about his eyes, " how 
 it was that after my disgrace I couldn't seem to 
 take an interest any more in anything ? Then 
 came the revival, and that gave me a notion that 
 religion might help me. I had heard, from a 
 child, that the Wood of Christ had a power to 
 wash away sins and to leave one white and spot- 
 less with a sense of being new and clean every 
 whit. That was what I wanted, just what I 
 wanted. I am sure that you never had a more 
 sincere, more dead-in -earnest convert than I was." 
 
 He paused a moment, as if in mental contem- 
 plation, and then the words dropped slowly from 
 his lips, as a dim, self-pitying smile rested on his 
 haggard face. 
 
 " I really think you would be sorry for me if 
 you knew how very bitter was my disappointment 
 when I found that these bright promises were 
 only figurative expressions which I had taken lit- 
 erally. Doubtless I should not have fallen into 
 such a ridiculous mistake, if my great need had 
 not made my wishes father to my thoughts. 
 Nobody was at all to blame but myself; nobody 
 at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I 
 
12 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 should have known, is not blotting them out. The 
 blood of Christ only turns them red instead of 
 black. It leaves them on the record. It leaves 
 them in the memory. That day when I blotted 
 my copy-book at school, to have had the teacher 
 forgive me ever so kindly would not have made 
 me feel the least bit better so long as the blot was 
 there. It wasn't any penalty from without, but 
 the hurt to my own pride which the spot made, 
 that I wanted taken away, so I might get heart 
 to go on. Supposing one of you — and you'll ex- 
 cuse me for asking you to put yourselves a mo- 
 ment in my place — had picked a pocket. Would 
 it make a great deal of difference in your state of 
 mind that the person whose pocket you had picked 
 kindly forgave you and declined to prosecute ? 
 Your offense against him was trifling and easily 
 repaired. Your chief offense was against your- 
 self, and that was irreparable. A''o other person 
 with his forgiveness can mediate between you 
 and yourself. Until you have been in such a fix 
 you can't imagine, perhaps, how curiously imper- 
 tinent it sounds to hear talk about somebody else 
 forgiving you for ruining yourself. It is like 
 mocking." 
 
 The nine o'clock bell pealed out from the mill 
 tower. -, 
 
 " I am trespassing on your kindness, but I 
 have only a few more words to say. The ancients 
 had a beautiful fable about the water of Lethe, in 
 which the soul that was bathed straightway forgot 
 all that was sad and evil in its previous life ; the 
 
DR. llLIDtNHOFF's PROCESS. I3 
 
 most stained, disgraced] and mournful of souls 
 coming forth fresh, blithe, and bright as a baby's. 
 I suppose my absurd misunderstanding arose from 
 a vague notion that the blood of Christ had in it 
 something like this virtue of Lethe water. Just 
 think how blessed a thing for men it would be if 
 such were indeed the case, if their memories could 
 be cleansed and disinfected at the same time 
 their hearts were purified ! Then the most dis- 
 graced and ashamed might live good and happy 
 lives again. Men would be redeemed from their 
 sins in fact, and not merely in name. The figura- 
 tive promises of the Gospel would become literally 
 true. But this is idle dreaming. I will not keep 
 you," and, checking himself abruptly, he sat 
 down. 
 
 The moment he did so, Mr. Lewis rose and 
 pronounced the benediction, dismissing the meet- 
 ing without the usual closing hymn. He was 
 afraid that something might be said by Deacon 
 Tuttle or Deacon Miller, who were good men, but 
 not very subtle in their spiritual insight, which 
 would still further ahenate the unfortunate young 
 man. His own intention of finding opportunity 
 for a little private talk with him after the meeting 
 was, however, disappointed by the promptness 
 with which Biyley left the room. He did not 
 seem to notice the sympathetic faces and out- 
 stretched hands around him. There was a set 
 smile on his face, and his eyes seem to look 
 through people without seeing them. There was 
 a buzz of conversation as the people began to talk 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
l5 DE, HEIDENHOFF S PR6CESS. 
 
 Madeline's little touch of coquetry had been merely 
 instinctive, a sort of unconscious reflex action of 
 the feminine nervous system, quite consistent with 
 very lugubrious engrossments. 
 
 To Henry there was something strangely sweet 
 in sharing with her for the first time a mood 
 of solemnity, seeing that their intercourse had 
 always before been in the vein of pleasantry and 
 badinage common to the first stages of courtships. 
 This new experience appeared to dignify their re- 
 lation, and weave them together with a new 
 strand. At length she said : 
 
 " Why didn't you go after poor George and 
 cheer him up instead of going home with me ? 
 Anybody could have done that." 
 
 "No doubt," rephed Henry, seriously, "but, 
 if I'd left anybody else to do it, I should have 
 needed cheering up as much as George does." 
 
 " Dear me," she exclaimed, as a little smile, 
 not exactly of vexation, curved her lips under 
 cover of the darkness, " you take a most unwar- 
 rantable liberty in being jealous of me. I never 
 gave you nor anybody else any right to be, and I 
 won't have it ! " 
 
 " Very well. It shall be just as you say," he 
 replied. The sarcastic humility of his tone made 
 her laugh in spite of herself, and she immediately 
 changed the subject, demanding : 
 
 " Where is Laura to-night ? " 
 
 " She's at home making cake for the picnic," 
 he said. 
 
bK. HElbENilOFF^S Pk6£ESS. If 
 
 *' The good girl ! and I ought to be making 
 some, too. I wonder if poor George will be at the 
 picnic ? " 
 
 " I doubt it," said Henry. " You know he 
 never goes to any sort of party. The last time I 
 saw him at such a place was at Mr. Bradford's. 
 He was playing whist, and they were joking about 
 cheating. Somebody said — Mr. Bradford it was 
 — ' I can trust my wife's honesty. She doesn't 
 know enough to cheat, but I don't know about 
 George.' George was her partner. Bradford 
 didn't mean any harm ; he forgot, you see. He'd 
 have bitten his tongue off otherwise sooner than 
 have said it. But everybody saw the application, 
 and there was a dead silence. George got red as 
 fire and then pale as death. I don't know how 
 they finished the hand, but presently somebody 
 made an excuse, and the game was broken off." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! dear 1 That was cruel 1 cruel 1 
 How could Mr. Bradford do it ? I should think 
 he would never forgive himself! never!" ex- 
 claimed Madeline, with an accent of poignant 
 sympathy, involuntarily pressing Henry's arm, 
 and thereby causing him instantly to forget all 
 about George and his misfortunes, and setting his 
 heart to beating so tumultuously that he was 
 afraid she would notice it and be offended. But 
 she did not seem to be conscious of the intoxicat- 
 ing effluence she was giving forth, and presently 
 added, in a tone of sweetest pity : 
 
 "He used to -to be so frank and dashing in hi3 
 manner, and now when he meets one of us girls 
 
l8 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 on the street he seems so embarrassed) and looks 
 away or down at the groqnd, as if he thought we 
 should not like to bow to him, or meant to cut 
 him. I'm sure we'd cut our heads off sooner. 
 It's enough to make one cry, such t^p^es, to see 
 how wretched he is, and so sensitive that no one 
 can say a word to cheer hini. Did you notice 
 what he said about leaving town ? I hadn't heard 
 anything about it before, had you ? " 
 
 " No," said Henry, " not a word. Wonder 
 where he's going. Perhaps he thinks it will be 
 easier for him in some place where they don't know 
 him." 
 
 They walked on in silence a few moments, and 
 then Madehne said, in a rousing tone : 
 
 " How strange it would seem if one really could 
 have unpleasant things blotted out of their 
 memories ! What dreadful thing would you forget 
 now, if you could ? Confess." 
 
 " I would blot out the recollection that you went 
 boat-riding with Will Taylor last Wednesday 
 afternoon, and what I've felt about it ever since." 
 
 " Dgar me, Mr. Henry Burr," said Madehne, with 
 an air of excessive disdain, " how long is it since I 
 a^tjipiped you to concern yourself with my affairs ? 
 If it wouldjj't please ypij-too much, I'd certainly box 
 your ears." 
 
 " I think you're ratlj^ir qnrea?oi?9.bIe," he pro- 
 tested, iij a hurt tone, ""you S3.id a minute ago 
 tjiat ysq wouldn't permit roe to bejealous of you, 
 and just because I'm so anxious to obey you that 
 
DR; heidenhoff's Pr6cess. 15 
 
 t want to forget that I ever was, you are 
 vexed." 
 
 A small noise, expressive of scorn, and not to 
 be represented by letters of the alphabet, was all 
 the reply she deigned to this more ingenious than 
 ingenuous plea. 
 
 " I've made my confession, and it's only fair y&u 
 should make yours," he said next. " What 
 remorseful deed have you done that you'd like to 
 forget ? " 
 
 " You needn't speak in that babyirig tone. I 
 fancy I could eomriiit sins as well as yoti, with all 
 your big mustache, if I wanted tds I don't believis 
 you'd hurt a flyj although you do look so like a 
 pirate. You've probably got a goody little con- 
 science, so white and soft that you'd die of shame 
 to have people see it." 
 
 " Excuse me, Lady Macbeth," he said, laughiilg, 
 " I don't wish to underrate your powers ol 
 depravity, but which of your soul-destroying sin3 
 would you prefer to forget, if, indeed, any of them 
 are shocking enough to trouble your excessively 
 hardened conscience ? " 
 
 " Well, I must admit," said Madeline, seriously, 
 " that I wouldn't care to forget anything I've done, 
 not even my faults and follies. I should be afraid 
 if they were taken away that I shouldn't have any 
 character left." 
 
 " Don't put it on that ground," said Henry. 
 " It's sheer vanity that makes you say so. You 
 know yeur faults are just big enough to be 
 
20 DR. IIEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 beautyspots, and that's why you'd rather keep 
 'em." 
 
 She reflected a moment, and then said, de- 
 cisively : 
 
 " That's a compliment. I don't believe I like 
 'em from you. Don't make me any more." 
 
 Perhaps she did not take the trouble to an- 
 alyze the sentiment that prompted her words. 
 Had she done so, she would doubtless have found 
 it in a consciousness when in his presence of being 
 surrounded with so fine and delicate an atmos- 
 phere of unspoken devotion that words of flattery 
 sounded almost gross. 
 
 They paused before a gate. Pushing it open 
 and passing within, she said. " Good night." 
 
 " One word more. I have a favour to ask," he 
 said. " May I take you to the picnic ? " 
 
 Why, I think no escort will be necessary." 
 she replied, " we go in broad daylight, and there 
 are no bears or Indians at Hemlock Hollow." 
 
 " But your basket. You'll need somebody to 
 carry your basket." 
 
 " Oh, yes, to be sure, my basket," she ex- 
 claimed, with an ironical accent. " It will weight 
 at least two pounds, and I couldn't possibly carry 
 it myself of course. By all means come, and 
 much obliged for your thoughtfulness." 
 
 But as she turned to go in she gave him a 
 glance which had just enough sweetness in it to 
 neutralize the irony of her words. In the treat- 
 ment of her lovers, Madeline always punctured 
 
DR. HEIDENHOPF S PROCESS. 21 
 
 the skin before applying a drop of sweetness, and 
 perhaps this accounted for the potent effect it 
 had to inflame the blood, compared with the 
 more, profuse but superficial applications of less 
 sharp-tongued maidens. 
 
 Henry waited until the graceful figure had a 
 moment revealed its charming outline against the 
 lamp-lit interior, as she half turned to close the 
 door. Love has occasional metaphysical turns, 
 and it was an odd feeling that came over him as 
 he walked away, being nothing less than a rush 
 of thankfulness and self-congratulation that he 
 was not Madehne. For, if he had been she, he 
 would have lost the ecstasy of loving her, of wor- 
 shiping her. Ah, how much she lost, how much 
 all those lose, who, fated to be the incarnations of 
 beauty, goodness, and grace, are precluded from 
 being their own worshipers ! Well, it was a con- 
 solation that she didn't know it, that she actually 
 thought that, with her little coquetries and ex- 
 actions, she was enjoying the chief usufruct of her 
 beauty. God make up to the haughty, wilful 
 darling in some other way for missing the passing 
 sweetness of the thrall she held her lovers in ! 
 
 When Burr reached home, he found his sister 
 Laura standing at the gate in a patch of moon- 
 light. 
 
 " How pretty you look to-night ! " he said, 
 pinching her round cheek. 
 
 The young lady merely shrugged her- shoulders, 
 and replied dryly : 
 
22 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESSi 
 
 " So she let you go home with her." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " he asked, laugh- 
 ing at her shrewd guess. 
 
 " Because you're so sweet, you goosey, of 
 course." 
 
 But, in truth, any such mode of accounting 
 for Henry's favorable comment on her appearance 
 was quite unnecessary. Laura, with her petite, 
 plump figure, sloe-black eyes, quick in moving, 
 curly head, and dark, clear cheeks, carnation tinted, 
 would have been thought by many quite as 
 charming a specimen of American girlhood as the 
 stately pale brunette who swayed her brother's 
 affections. 
 
 " Come for a walk, chicken. It is much too 
 pretty a night to go in doors," he said. 
 
 " Yes, and furnish ears for Madeline's praises, 
 with a few more reflected compliments for pay, 
 perhaps," she replied, contemptuously. " Be- 
 sides," she added, " I must go into the house and 
 keep father company. I only came out to cool 
 off after baking the cake. You'd better come in, 
 too. These moonlight nights always make him 
 specially sad, you know." 
 
 The brother and sister had been left mother- 
 less not long before, and Laura, in trying to fill 
 her mother's place in the household, so far as she 
 might, was always looking out that her father 
 should have as little opportunity as possible to 
 brood alone over his companionless condition, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 23 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 That same night toward morning Henry sud- 
 denly awoke from a sound sleep. Drowsiness, by 
 some strange influence, iiad been completely ban- 
 ished from his eyes, and in its stead he became 
 sensible of a profound depression of spirits. Physi- 
 cally, he was entirely comfortable, nor could he 
 trace to any sensation from without either this 
 sudden awakening or the mental condition in 
 which he found himself. It was not that he 
 thought of anything in particular that was gloomy 
 or discouraging, but that all the ends and aims, 
 not only of his own individuar life, but of life in 
 general, had assumed an aspect so empty, vain, 
 and colorless, that he felt he would not rise from 
 his bed for anything existence had to offer. He 
 recalled his usual frame of mind, in which these 
 things seemed attractive, with a dull wonderment 
 that so baseless a delusion should be so strong 
 and so general. He wondered if it were possible 
 that it should ever again come over him. 
 
 The cold, grey light of earliest morning, that 
 light which is rather the fading of night than the 
 coming of day, filled the room with a faint hue, 
 more cheerless than pitchiest darkness. A dis- 
 tant bell, with slow and heavy stfokes, struck 
 three. It was the dead point in the daily revo- 
 
24 t3R. HEIDENHdFp's PROCESS; 
 
 lution of the earth's life^ that point just befor§ 
 dawn, when men oftenest die ; when surely, but 
 for the force of momentum, the course of nature 
 would stop, and at which doubtless it will one day 
 pause eternally, when the clock is run down. The 
 long-drawn mellow reverberations of the bell, tilrn-" 
 ing remoteness into music, full of the pathos of a 
 sad and infinite patience, died away with an effect 
 unspeakably dreary. His spirit, drawn forth after 
 the vanishing vibrations, seemed to traverse waste 
 spaces without beginning or ending, and seons of 
 monotonous duration. A sense of utter lonehness 
 — loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneli- 
 ness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void 
 of unconsciousness — enfolded him as a pall. Life 
 lay like an incubus on his bosom. He shuddered 
 at the thought that death might overlook him, and 
 deny him its refuge. Even Madeline's face, as he 
 conjured it up, seemed wan and pale, moving to 
 unutterable pity, powerless to chees, and all the 
 illusio-ns and passions of love were dim as ball-room 
 candles in the gray light of dawn. 
 
 Gradually the mood passed, and he slept again. 
 
 As early as half past eight the following forenoon, 
 groups of men with very serious faces were to be 
 seen standing at the corners of the streets, convers- 
 ing in hushed tones, and women with awed voices 
 were talking across the fences which divided 
 adjoining yards. Even the children, as they went 
 to school, forgot to play, and talked in whispers 
 together, or lingered near the groups of men to 
 catch a word or two of their cpnyersation, or, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 25 
 
 maybe, walked silently along with a puzzled, solemn 
 look upon their bright faces. 
 
 For a tragedy had occurred at dead of night 
 which never had been paralleled in the history of the 
 village. That morning the sun, as it peered 
 through the closed shutters of an upper chamber, 
 had relieved the darkness of a thing it had been 
 afraid of. George Bayley sat there in a chair, his 
 head sunk on his breast, a small, blue hole in his 
 temple, whence a drop or two of blood had oozed, 
 quite dead. 
 
 This, then, was what he meant when he said 
 that he had made arrangements for leaving the 
 village. The doctor thought that the fatal shot 
 must have been fired at about three o'clock that 
 morning, and, when Henry heard this, he knew 
 that it was the breath of the angel of death as he 
 flew by that had chilled the genial current in his 
 veins. 
 
 Bayley's family lived elsewhere, and his father, 
 a stern, cold, haughty-looking man, was the only 
 relative present at the funeral. When Mr. Lewis 
 undertook to tell him, for his comfort, that there 
 was reason to believe that George was out of his 
 head when he took his life, Mr. Bayley interrupted 
 him. 
 
 " Don't say that," he said. " He knew what 
 he was doing. I should not wish any one to think 
 otherwise. I am prouder of him than I had ever 
 expected to be again." 
 
 A choir of girls with glistening eyes sang sweet, 
 
26 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 sad songs at the funeral, songs which, while they 
 lasted, took away the ache of bereavement, like a 
 cool sponge pressed upon a smarting spot. It 
 seemed almost cruel that they must ever cease. 
 And, after the funeral, the young men and girls 
 who had known George, not feeling like returning 
 that day to their ordinary thoughts and occupa- 
 tions, gathered at the house of one of them and 
 passed the hours till dusk, talking tenderly of the 
 departed, and recalling his generous traits and 
 gracious ways. 
 
 The funeral had taken place on the day fixed 
 for the picnic. The latter, in consideration of the 
 saddened temper of the young people, was put off a 
 fortm'ght. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 About half past eight on the morning of the 
 day set for the postponed picnic, Henry knocked 
 at Widow Brand's door. He had by no means 
 forgotten Madehne's consent to allow him to 
 carry her basket, although two weeks had inter- 
 vened. 
 
 She came to the door herself. He had never 
 seen her in anything that set off her dark eyes and 
 olive complexion more richly than the simple picnic 
 dress of white, trimmed with a little crimson braid 
 about the neck and sleeves, which she wore to-day. 
 It was gathered up at the bottom for wandering in 
 the woods just enough to show the little boots. 
 She look surprised at seeing him, and exclaimed : 
 
 " You haven't come to tell me that the picnic is 
 put off again, or Laura's sick. 
 
 '- The picnic is all right, and Laura too. I've 
 come to carry your basket for you." 
 
 " Why, you're really very kind," said she, as if 
 she thought him slightly officious. 
 
 ' ■ Don't you remember you told me I might do 
 so ? " he said, getting a little red under her cool 
 inspection. 
 
 •• When did I ? " 
 
28 DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS. 
 
 " Two weeks ago, that evening poor George 
 spoke in meeting." 
 
 " Oh ! " she answered, smiling, " so long ago as 
 that ? What a terrible memory you have ! Come 
 in just a moment, please ; I'm nearly ready." 
 
 Whether she merely took his word for it, or 
 whether she had remembered her promise perfectly 
 well all the time, and only wanted to make him 
 ask twice for the favor, lest he should feel too pre- 
 sumptuous, I don't pretend- to know. Mrs. Brand 
 set a chair for him with much cordiality. She 
 was a gentle, mild-mannered little lady, such a 
 contrast in style and character to Madeline that 
 there was a certain amusing fitness in the latter's 
 habit of calling her " My baby." 
 
 " You have a very pleasant day for your picnic, 
 Mr. Burr, said' she. 
 
 "Yes, we are very lucky," -replied Henry, his 
 eyes fallowing Madeline's movements as ' she stood 
 before the gtess, putting on her hat, which had a 
 red feather in it. 
 
 To have her thus add the last touches to her 
 toilet in his presence was a suggestion of familiarity, 
 of domesticity, that was very intoxicating to his 
 imagination. 
 
 "Is your father well ? " inquired Mrs. Brand, 
 affably. 
 
 "Very well, thank you, very well, indeed," he 
 replied absently. 
 
 "There; now I'm ready," said Madeline, "Here's 
 the basket, Henry. Good-bye, mother." 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS. ij 
 
 They were a well-matched pair, the stalwart 
 young man and the tali, graceful girl, and it is no 
 wonder the girl's mother stood in the door looking 
 after -them with a thoughtful smile. 
 
 Hemlock Hollow was a glen between wooded 
 bluffs, about a mile up the beautiful river on which 
 Newville was situated, and boats had been collected 
 at the rendezvous on the river bank to convey the 
 picniekers thither. On arriving, Madeline and 
 Henry found all the party assembled and in capital 
 spirits. There was still just enough shadow on 
 their merriment to leave the disposition to laugh 
 slightly ia excess of its indulgence, than which no 
 condition of mind more favourable to a good time 
 can be imagined. 
 
 Laura -was there, and to her Will Taylor had 
 attached himself. He was a dapper little black' 
 eyed fellow, a clerk in the dry^goods store, full of 
 fun and good nature, and a general favourite, but 
 it was certainly rather absurd that Henry should 
 be apprehensive of him as a rival. There also was 
 Fanny Miller, who had the prettiest arm in NeW' 
 ville, a fact discovered once when she wore a 
 Martha Washington toilet at a masquerade sociable, 
 and since circulated from mouth to mouth 
 among the young men. And there, too, was Emily 
 Hunt, who had shocked the girls and thrown 
 the youth into a pleasing panic by appearing at a 
 young people's party the previous winter in low 
 neck and short sleeves. It is to be remarked in 
 extenuation that she had then but recently come 
 from the city, and was not familiar with Newville 
 
so DR. HEIDENHOFFS PROCESS. 
 
 etiquette. Nor must I forget to mention Ida 
 Lewis, tiie minister's daughter, a little girl with 
 poor complexion and beautiful brown eyes, who 
 cherished a hopeless passion for Henry. Among 
 the young men was Harry Tuttle, the clerk in the 
 confectionery and f^nqy-goods store, a young man 
 whose- father had once sent him for a term to a 
 neighbouring seminary, as a result of which classical 
 experience he still retained a certain jaunty 
 student air verging on the rakish, that was 
 admired by the girls and envied by the young 
 men. 
 
 And there, above all, was Tom Longman. Tom 
 was a big, hulking fellow, good-natured and simple- 
 hearted in the extreme. He was the victim of an 
 intense susceptibility to the girls' charms, joined 
 with ap intolerable shyness and self-consciousness 
 when in their presence. from this consuming 
 embarassment he would seek relief by working 
 like a horse whenever there was anything to do. 
 With his hands occupied he had an excuse for not 
 talking to the girls or being addressed by them, 
 ^nd, thus shielded from the direct rays of their 
 society, basked with inexpressible emotions in the 
 general atmosphere of sweetness and hght which 
 they diffused. He liked picnics because there 
 was much work to do, and never attended in-doof 
 parties because there was none. This inordinate 
 taste for industry, in connection with social enjoy- 
 ment on Tone's part was strongly encouraged by 
 the other young nien, and they were the ones who 
 always stipul^t^d that h^ should be of the party 
 
DR. HEIDENIIOFf's PROCESS. 3I 
 
 when there was likely to be any call for rowing, 
 taking care of horses, carrying of loads, putting 
 out of croquet sets or other manual exertion. He 
 was generally an odd one in such companies. It 
 would be no kindness to provide him a partner, 
 and, besides, everybody made so many jokes about 
 him that none of the girls quite cared to have 
 their names coupled with his, although they all 
 had a compassionate liking for .him. 
 
 On the present occasion this poor slave of th6 
 petticoat had been at work preparing the boats 
 all the morning. 
 
 " Why, how nicely you have arranged every- 
 thing!" said Madeline kindly, as she stood on the 
 sand waiting for Henry to bring up a boat. 
 
 "What?" replied Tom laughing in a flustered 
 way. 
 
 He always laughed just so and said "what?" 
 when any of the girls spoke to him, being too 
 much confused by the fact of being addressed to 
 catch what was said the first time. 
 
 " It's very good of you to arrange the boats 
 for us," Madeline repeated. 
 
 "Oh, 'taint anything, 'taint anything kt all,*' 
 he blurted out, with a very red face. 
 
 " You are going up in our boat, ain't you, 
 Longman ? " said Harry Tuttle. 
 
 " No, Tom, you're going with us," cried anothei" 
 young man. 
 
 " He's going with us, like a sensible fellow," 
 said Will Taylor, who, with Laura Burr, was sitting 
 
22 PR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 
 
 on the forward thwart of the boat, into the stern of 
 which Henry was. now assisting Madehne. 
 
 " Tom, these lazy young men are just wanting 
 you to do their rowing for them," said she. '' Get 
 into our boat, and I'll make Henry row you." 
 
 "What do you say to that, Henry ? " said Tom, 
 snickering. 
 
 " It isn't for me to say anything after Madeline 
 has spoken," replied the young man. 
 
 •' She has him in good subjection." remarked 
 Ida Lewis, not over-sweetly. 
 
 "All right. I'll come in your boat, Miss Brand, 
 if you'll takecare of me," said Tom with a sudden 
 spasm of boldness, followed by violent blushes at 
 the thought that perhaps he had said something 
 too free. 
 
 The boat was pushed off. Nobody took the 
 oars. " I thought you were going to row?" said 
 Madeline, turning to . Henry, who sat beside her 
 in the stern, 
 
 " Certainly," said he, making as if he would 
 rise. " Tom, you just sit here while I row." 
 
 " Oh, no, I'd just as lief row," said Tom seizing 
 the oars with feverish haste. 
 
 '' So would I, Tom j I want a little exercise," 
 urged Henry with a hypocritical grin, as he stood 
 up in an attitude of readiness. 
 
 " Oh, I hke to row. I'd a great deal rather, 
 honestly," asseverated Tom, as he made the water 
 foam wifli the yiolenpe of jlis strokes, compelling 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFP'S PROCESS. 33 
 
 Henry to resume his seat to preserve his equilib- 
 rium. 
 
 " It's perfectly plain that you don't want to 
 sit by me, Tom. That hurts my feelings," said 
 Madeline, pretending to pout. 
 
 "Oh, no it isn't that," protested Tom. "Only 
 I'd rather row; that is, I mean, you know, it's 
 such fun rowing." 
 
 " Very well, then," said Madeline, " I sha'n't 
 help you any more ; and here they all are tying 
 their boats on to ours." 
 
 Sure enough, one of the other boats had fastened 
 its chain to the stern of theirs, and the others had 
 fastened to that ; their oarsmen were lying 
 oif; and Tom was propelling the entire flotilla. 
 
 " Oh, I can row 'em all just as easy as not," 
 gasped the devoted youth, the perspiration rolling 
 down his forehead. 
 
 But this was a little too bad, and Henry soon 
 cast off the other boats, in spite of the protests of 
 their occupants, who regarded Tom's brawn and 
 muscle as the common stock of the entire party, 
 which no one boat had a right to appropriate. 
 
 On reaching Hemlock Hollow, Madeline asked 
 the poor young man for his hat, and returned it 
 to him adorned with evergreens, which nearly 
 distracted him with bashfulness and delight, and 
 drove him to seek a safety-valve for his excitement 
 in superhuman activity all the rest of the morning, 
 arranging croquet sets, hanging swings, breaking 
 ice, squeezing leniops, and fetching water, 
 
oj. DR. HEIDEMHOFF'S PROCfisS. 
 
 '•' Oh, how thirsty I am ! " sighed Madeline, 
 throwing down her croquet mallet. 
 
 " The ice-water is not yet ready, but I know a 
 spring a little way off where the water is cold as 
 ice," said Henry. 
 
 " Show it to me this instant," she cried, and they 
 walked off together, followed by Ida Lewis's 
 unhappy eyes. 
 
 The distance to the spring was not great, but 
 the way was rough, and once or twice he had to 
 help her over fallen trees and steep banks. Once 
 she slipped a little, and for a single supreme 
 moment he held her whole weight in his arms. 
 Before, they had been talking and laughing gayly, 
 but that made a sudden silence. He dared not 
 look at her for some moments, and when he did 
 there was a slight flush tinging her usually colour- 
 less cheek. 
 
 His pulses were already bounding wildly, and, 
 at this betrayal that she had shared his conscious- 
 ness at that moment, his agitation was tenfold 
 increased. It was the first time she had ever 
 shown a sign of confusion in his presence. The 
 sensation of mastery, of power over her, which it 
 gave, was so utterly new that it put a sort of mad- 
 ness in his blood. Without a word they came to 
 the spring and pretended to drink. As she turned 
 to go back, he lightly caught her fingers in a 
 detaining clasp, and said, in a voice rendered harsh 
 by suppressed emotion : 
 
 " Don't be in such a hurry. Where will you find 
 a cooler spot ? " 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 35 
 
 " Oh, it's cool enough anywhere ! Let's go back," 
 she replied, starting to return as she spoke. She 
 saw his excitement, and, being herself a little con- 
 fused, had no idea of allowing a scene to be precipi- 
 tated just then. She flitted on before with so light 
 a foot that he did not overtake her until she came 
 to a bank too steep for her to surmount without 
 aid. He sprang up and extended her bis hand. 
 Assuming an expression as if she were unconscious 
 who was helping her, she took it, and he drew her 
 up to his side. Then with a sudden, audacious 
 impulse, half hoping she would not be angry, half 
 reckless if she were, he clasped her closely in his 
 arms, and kissed her lips. She gasped, and freed 
 herself. 
 
 " How dared you do such a thing to me ? " she 
 cried. 
 
 The big fellow stood before her, sheepish, 
 dogged, contrite, desperate, all in one. 
 
 " I couldn't help it," he blurted out. The plea 
 was somehow absurdly simple, and yet rather 
 unanswerable. Angry as she was, she really 
 couldn't think of anything to say, except, 
 
 " You'd better help it," with which rather 
 ineffective rebuke she turned away and walked 
 toward the picnic ground. Henry followed in a 
 demoralized frame. His mind was in a ferment. 
 He could not realize what had happened. He 
 could scarcely believe that he had actually done it. 
 He could not conceive how he had dared it. And 
 now what penalty would she inflict ? What if she 
 should not forgive him ? His soul was dissolved 
 
36 DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS. 
 
 in fears. But, sooth- to say, the young lady's ac- 
 tual state of mind was by no means so implacable 
 as he apprehended. -She had been ready to be 
 very an^ry, but the suddenness and depth of his 
 contrition had disarmed her. It took all the force 
 out of her indignation to see that he actually 
 seemed to have a deeper senseof the enormity of 
 his act than she herself had. And when, after they 
 had rejoined the party, she saw that, instead of 
 taking part' in the sports, he- kept aloof, wandering 
 aimless and disconsolate by himself among the 
 pines, she took compassion on him and sent some 
 one to tell him she wanted him to come and push 
 her in the swing. People had kissed her before. 
 She was not going to leave the lirst person vwho 
 had seemed to fully realize thei importance of the 
 proceeding to suifer unduly from a susceptibility 
 which did him so much credit. As for Henry, he 
 hardly believed his ears when he heard the 
 summons to attend her. At that the .kiss which 
 her rebuke had turned cold on his; lips began to 
 glow afresh, and for the first time he lasted its 
 exceeding sweetness ; for her calling to him seemed 
 to ratify and consent to it. There were others 
 standing about as he came up to where Madeline 
 sat in the swing,, and he was silent, for he could not 
 talk of indifferent things. 
 
 With what a fresh charm,, with what new sweet 
 suggestions of complaisance that kiss- had invest- 
 ed every line and curve of her, from hat-plume to 
 boot-tip ! A delicious tremulous sense of proprie- 
 torship tinged his every thought of her. He 
 
JDR. HELDENHOFFS PROCESS. 37 
 
 touched the swing-rope as fondly as if it were an 
 electric chain that could communicate the caress to 
 her. 
 
 Tom Longman, having done all the work that 
 offered itself, had been wandering about in a state of 
 acute embarrassment, not daring to join himself- to 
 any of the groups, much less accost a young lady 
 who might be alone. As he drifted near the swing, 
 Madeline said to Henry : 
 
 " You may stop swinging me now. I think I'd 
 like to go out rowing." The roung man's cup 
 seemed running over. He could scarcely command 
 his voice for delight as he said : 
 
 " It will be jolly rowing just now. I'm sure we 
 can get some pond-lilies." 
 
 " Really," she replied, airily, "you take too much 
 for granted. I was going to ask Tom Longman to 
 take me out." 
 
 She called to 'Tom, and as he came up, grinning 
 and shambling, she indicated to him her pleasure 
 that he should row her upon the river. The idea 
 of being alone in a small boat for perhaps fifteen 
 minutes with the belle of Newville, and the object 
 of his own secret and distant adoration, paralyzed 
 Tom's faculties with an agony of embarrass- 
 ment. He grew very red, and there was such 
 a buzzing in his ears that he could not feel 
 sure he heard aright, and Madeline had to repeat 
 herself several times before he seemed to fully 
 realize the appalling nature of the proposition. As 
 they walked down to the shore she chatted with 
 
98 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 him, but he only responded with a profusion of 
 vacant laughs. When he had pulled out on the 
 river, his rowing, from his desire to make an 
 excuse for not talking, was so tremendous that they 
 cheered him from the shore, at the same time 
 shouting : 
 
 " Keep her straight ! You're going into the 
 bank!"' 
 
 The truth was, Tom could not guide the boat 
 because he did not dare to look astern for fear of 
 meeting Madehne's eyes, which, to judge from 
 the space his eyes left around her, he must have 
 supposed to fill at least a quarter of the horizon, 
 like an aurora, in fact. But, all the same, he was 
 having an awfully good time, although perhaps it 
 would be more proper to say he would have a good 
 time when he came to think it over afterward. 
 It was an experience which would prove a mine 
 of gold in his memory, rich enough to furnish for 
 years the gilding to his modest day-dreams. 
 Qeauty, like wealth, should make its owner 
 generous. It is a gracious thing in fair women at 
 times to make largesse of their beauty, bestowing 
 its light more freely on tongue-tied, timid adorers 
 than on their bolder suitors, giving to them 
 who dare not ask. Their beauty never can seem 
 niore precious to women than when for pharity's 
 sake they brighten with its lustre the eyes of shy 
 and retiring admirers. 
 
 As Henry was ruefully meditating upon the 
 uncertainty of the sex, and debating the probability 
 that Madeline had pallet him to swing hgr fo? 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS; 39 
 
 the express pirpose of getting a chance to snub 
 him, Ide Lewis came to him and said : 
 
 " Mr. Burr, we're getting up a game of croquet. 
 Won't you play ? " 
 
 " If I can be on your side," he answered, 
 civilly. 
 
 He knew the girls liking for him, and was always 
 kind to her. At his answer her face flushed with 
 pleasure, and she replied shyly : 
 
 " If you'd like to you may." 
 
 Henry was not in the least a conceited fellow, 
 but it was impossible that he should not under- 
 stand the reason why Ida, who all the morning 
 had looked forlorn enough, was now the life of 
 the croquet-ground, and full of smiles and flushes. 
 She was a good player, and had a corresponding 
 interest in beating, but her equanimity on the 
 present occasion was not in the least disturbed by 
 the disgraceful defeat which Henry's awkwardness 
 and absence of mind entailed on their side. 
 
 But her portion of sunshine for that day was 
 brief enough, for Madeline soon returned from 
 her boat-ride, and Henry found an excuse for 
 leavmg the game and joining her where she sat 
 on the ground between the knees of a gigantic 
 oak, sorting pond-lilies, which the girls were 
 admiring. As he came up, she did not appear to 
 notice him. As soon as he had a chance to speak 
 without being overheard, he said, soberly: 
 
 " Tom ought to thank me for that boat-ride, I 
 suppose." 
 
^0 PR. heidenhoff'3 process. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," she answered, 
 with assumed carelessness. 
 
 " I mean that you want to punish me." 
 
 " You're sufficiently conceited," she replied. 
 " Laura, come here ; your brother is teasing me." 
 
 " And do you think I want to be teased too ? " 
 replied that young lady pertly, as she walked off. 
 
 Madeline would have risen and left Henry 
 but she was too proud to let him think that she 
 was afraid of him. Neither was she afraid, but 
 she was confused, and momentarily without her 
 usual self-confidence. One reason for her running 
 off with Tom had been to get a chance to think. 
 No girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can 
 be pressed to a man's breast, wildly throbbing with 
 love for her, and not experience some agitation in 
 consequence. Whatever may be the state of her 
 sentiments, there is a magnetism in such a contact 
 which she can not at once throw off. That kiss 
 had brought her relations with Henry to a crisis. 
 It had precipitated the necessity of some decision. 
 She could no longer hold him off and play with 
 him. By that bold dash he had gained a vantage- 
 ground, a certain masterful attitude which he had 
 never held before. Yet, after all, I am not sure 
 that she was not just a little afraid of him, and, 
 moreover, that she did not like him all the better 
 for it. It was such a novel feeling that it began 
 to make some things thought of, in connection 
 with him, seem more possible to her mind than 
 they had ever seemed before. As she peeped 
 
Br. heideniioff's process. 41 
 
 furtively at this young man, so suddenly grown 
 formidable, as he reclined carelessly on the ground 
 at her feet, she admitted to herself that there was 
 something very manly in the sturdy figure and 
 the square- forehead with the curly black locks 
 hanging over it. She looked at him with a new 
 interest, half shrinking, half attracted, as one who 
 might come into a very close relation with herself. 
 She scarcely knew whether the thought was 
 agreeable or not. 
 
 "Give me your hat," she said, "and I'll put some 
 lilies in it." 
 
 "You are very good," said he, handing it to her. 
 
 " Does it strike you so ? " she replied, hesitatingly, 
 " Then I won't do it. I don't want to appear 
 particularly good to you. I didn't know just how it 
 would seem," 
 
 " Oh, it won't seem very good ; only about 
 middling," he urged, upon which representation she 
 took the hat. 
 
 He watched her admiringly as she deftly 
 wreathed the liUies around it, holding it up, now this 
 way and now that, while she critically inspected the 
 effect. 
 
 Then her caprice changed. " I've half a mind 
 to drop it into the river. Would you jump after 
 it ? " she said, tvsfirling it by the brim, and look- 
 ing over the steep bank, near which she sat, into 
 the deep, dark water almost perpendicularly below. 
 
 " If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I 
 would jump quickly enough," he replied. 
 
42 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " You musn't talk chaff to me, sir ; we'll see," 
 and snatching a glove from her pocket she held it 
 out over the water. They were both of them in 
 that state of suppressed excitement which made 
 such an experiment on each other's nerve danger- 
 ous. Their eyes met and neither flinched. If she 
 had dropped it, he would have gone after it. 
 
 " After all," she said, suddenly, " that would be 
 taking a good deal of trouble to get a mitten. If 
 you are so anxious for it, I will give it to you now"; 
 and she held out the glove to him with an inscru- 
 table face. 
 
 He sprang up from the ground. " Madeline, do 
 you mean it ? " he asked, scarcely audibly, his face 
 grown white and pinched. She crumpled the 
 obnoxious glove into her pocket. 
 
 " ^V"hy, you poor fellow ! " she exclaimed, the 
 wild-fire in her eyes quenched in a moment with the 
 dew of pity. " Do you care so much ? " 
 
 " I care everything," he said, huskily. 
 
 But, as luck would have it, just at that instant 
 Will Taylor came running up, pursued by Laura, 
 and threw himself upon Madeline's protection. It 
 appeared that he had confessed to the possession of 
 a secret, and on being requested by Laura to impart 
 it bad flatly refused to do so. 
 
 " I can't really interfere to protect any young 
 man who refuses to tell a secret to a young lady," 
 said Madeline, gravely. " Neglect to tell her the 
 
Br. heidenhoff's process. 41 
 
 feecret without being particularly asked to do so, 
 would be bad enough, but to refuse after being 
 requested, is an offense which calls for the sharpest 
 correction." 
 
 " And that is'nt all, either," said Laura, vindic- 
 tively flirting the switch with which she had pursued 
 him. " He used offensive language." 
 
 " What did he say ? " demanded Madeline 
 judicially. 
 
 " I asked him if he was sure it was a secret that 
 
 I did'nt know already, and he said he was ; and I 
 
 asked him what made him sure, and he said because 
 
 if I knew it everybody else would. As much as to 
 
 - say I could'nt keep a secret." 
 
 " This looks worse and worse, young man," said 
 the judge, severely. " The only course left for 
 ■ you is to make a clean breast of the affair, and 
 throw yourself on the mercy of the court. If the 
 secret turns out to be a good one, I'll let you off as 
 easily as I can." 
 
 " It's about the new drug-clerk, the one who is 
 going to take George Bayley's place," said Will, 
 laughing. 
 
 " Oh, do tell quick ! " exclaimed Laura. 
 
 " I don't care who it is. I shan't like him," said 
 Madehne. " Poor George ! and here we are for- 
 getting all about him this beautiful day ! " 
 
 "What's the new clerk's name?" said Laura, 
 impatiently. 
 
 " Harrison Cordis." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
^_|. DR. HglDENHOFF 3 PROCESS. 
 
 " Harrison Cordis," 
 
 " Rather an odd name," said Laura, " I never 
 iicard it." 
 
 " No," said Will, " he comes all the way from 
 Boston." 
 
 " Is he handsome ? " inquired Laura. 
 
 " I really don't know," replied Will. " I presume 
 Parker failed to make that a condition, although 
 really he ought to, for the looks of the clerk is the 
 jirincipal element in the sale of soda-water, seeing 
 girls are the only ones who drink it." 
 
 " Of course-it is," said Laura, frankly. " I didn't 
 drink any all last summer, because poor George's 
 sad face took away my disposition. Never mind," 
 she added, " we shall all have a chance to see how 
 he looks at:church to-morrow; " and with that the 
 two girls went off together to help set the table for 
 lunch. 
 
 The picnickers did not row home till sunset, 
 but Henry found no opportunity to resume the 
 conversation with Madeline which had been broken 
 off at such an interesting point. 
 
DR. HEIPENHOFF S PROCESS. 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The advent of a stranger was an event of impor- 
 tance in the small social world of Newville. Mr. 
 Harrison Cordis, the new clerk in the drug-store, 
 might well have been flattered by the attention 
 which he excited at church the next day, especially 
 from the fairer half of the congregation. Far, how- 
 ever, from appearing discomposed thereby, he 
 returned it with such interest that at least iialf the 
 girls thought they had capitvated him, by the end of 
 the morning service. They all agreed that he was 
 awfully handsome, though Laura maintained that 
 he. was rather too pretty for a man. He was 
 certainly very pretty. His figure was tall, slight 
 and elegant. He had delicate hands and feet, a 
 white forehead, deep-blue smiling eyes, short, 
 curly, yellow hair, and a small mustache, 
 drooping over lips as enticing as a girl's. 
 But the ladies voted his manners yet more 
 pleasing than his appearance. They were charmed 
 by his easy self-possession and constant alertness 
 as to details of courtesy. The village beaus scorn- 
 fully called -him " cityfied," and secretly longed to 
 be like him. A shrewder criticism than that to 
 which he was exposed would, however, have found 
 the fault with Cordis's manners that, under a show 
 of superior ease and affability, he was disposed to 
 
46 dS.; tiEtDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 take liberties with his new acquaintances, and 
 exploit their simplicity for his own entertainment; 
 Evidently he felt that he was in the country. 
 
 That very first Sunday, after evening meeting, he 
 induced Fanny Miller, at whose father's house he 
 boarded, to introduce him to Madeline, and after- 
 ward walked home with her, making himself very 
 agreeable, and crowning his audacity by asking 
 permission to call. Fanny, who went along with 
 them tattled of this, and it produced a considerable 
 sensation among the girls, for it was the wont of 
 Newville wooers to make very gradual approaches.- 
 Laura warmly expressed to Madeline her indigna- 
 tion at the impudence of the proceeding, but that 
 young lady was sure she did not see any harm in 
 it ; whereupon Laura lost her temper a little, and 
 hinted that it might be more to her credit if she 
 did. Madeline replied pointedly, and the result was 
 a little spat, from which Laura issued second best, 
 as people generally did who provoked a verbal 
 strife with Madeline. Meanwhile it was rumored 
 that Cordis had availed himself of the permission 
 that he had asked, and that he had, moreover, 
 been seen talking with her in the post-office several 
 times. The. drug-store being next door to the post- 
 office, it was easy for him, under pretense of 
 calling for the mail, to waylay there any one he 
 might wish to meet. The last of the week Fanny 
 Miller gave a little tea-party, to make Cordis more 
 generally acquainted. On that occasion, he singled 
 out Madeline with his attentions in such a pro- 
 nounced manner that the other girls were some- 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS. 47 
 
 what piqued. Laura, having her brother's interest 
 at heart, had much more serious reasons for being 
 uneasy at the look of things. They all remarked 
 how queerly Madeline acted that evening. She 
 was so subdued and quiet, not a bit like herself. 
 When the party broke up. Cordis walked home 
 with Madeline and Laura, whose paths lay together. 
 
 " I'm extremely fortunate," said he, as he was 
 walkmg on with Laura, after leaving Madeline at 
 her house, " to have a chance to escort the two 
 belles of Newville at once." 
 
 " I'm not so fooHsh as I look, Mr. Cordis," said 
 she rather sharply. She was not going to let him 
 think he could turn the head of every Newville 
 girl as he had Madeline's, with his city airs and 
 compliments. 
 
 " You might be, and not mind owning it," he re- 
 plied, making an excuse of her words to scrutinize 
 her face with a frank admiration that sent the 
 color to her cheeks, though she was more vexed 
 than pleased. 
 
 " I mean that I don't like flattery." 
 
 " Are you sure ? " he asked, with apparent sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " Of course I am. What a question ! " 
 
 " Excuse me ; I only asked because I never met 
 any one before who didn't." 
 
 '• Never met anybody who didn't like to be told 
 things about themselves which they knew weren't 
 true, and were just said because somebody thought 
 they were foolish enough to believe 'em ? " 
 
^8 DR. HEIDENHOFf's PROCESS; 
 
 " I don't expect you to believe 'em yourself,'' 
 he replied ; only vain people believe the good 
 things people say about them ; but I wouldn't 
 give a cent for friends who didn't think better of 
 me than I think of myself, and tell me so occa- 
 sionally, too." 
 
 They stood a moment at Laura's gate, and 
 just then Henry, coming home from the gun-shop 
 of which he was foreman, passed them, and entered 
 the house. " Is that your brother ? " asked 
 Cordis. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " It does one's eyes good to see such a powerful- 
 looking young man. Is your brother married 
 may I ask ? " 
 
 " He is not." 
 
 " In coming into a new circle as I have done, 
 you understand, MisS Burr, that I often feel a 
 certain awkwardness on account of not knowing 
 therelatipns between the persons I meet," he said, 
 apologizing for his questions. 
 
 Laura saw her opportunity, and promptly im- 
 proved it. 
 
 " My brother has been attentive to Miss Brand 
 for a long time. They are about as good as en- 
 gaged. Good evening, Mr. Cordis." 
 
 It so happened that several days after this con- 
 versation, as Madeline was walking home one 
 afternoon, she glanced back at a crossing of the 
 street, and saw Harrison Cordis coming behind 
 her on his way to tea. At the rate she was walking 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 49 
 
 she would reach home before he overtook her, 
 but, if she walked a very little slower, he would 
 overtake her. Her pace slackened. She blushed 
 at her conduct, but she did not hurry. 
 
 The most dangerous lovers women have are 
 men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such 
 men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their 
 own organizations, read women as easily and accu- 
 rately as women read each other. They are alert 
 to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in 
 tone,, expression, and bearing, which betray the 
 real mood far more unmistakably than more 
 obvious signs. Cordis had seen her backward 
 glance, and noted her steps grow slower with a 
 complacent smile. It was this which emboldened 
 him, in spite of the short acquaintance, to venture 
 on the line he did. 
 
 " Good evening, Miss Brand," he said, as he 
 overtook her. "I don't really think it's fair to 
 begin to hurry when you hear somebody trying to 
 overtake you." 
 
 " I'm sure I didn't mean to," she replied, glad to 
 have a chance to tell the truth, without suspecting, 
 poor girl, that he knew very well she was telling it. 
 
 " It isn't safe to," he said, laughing. " You can't 
 tell who it may be. Now, it might have been Mr. 
 Burr, instead of only me." 
 
 She understood instantly. Somebody had been 
 telling him about Henry's attentions to her. A 
 bitter anger, a feeling of which a moment before 
 she would have deemed herself utterly incapable, 
 
50 OR. HfilDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 surged up in her heart against the person, whoever 
 it was, who had told him this. For several seconds 
 she could not control herself to speak. Finally, 
 she said : — 
 
 " I don't understand you. Why do you speak of 
 Mr. Burr to me ? " 
 
 " I beg pardon. I should not have done so." 
 
 " Please explain what you mean." 
 
 "You'll excuse me, I hope," he said, as if quite 
 distressed to have displeased her. " It was an 
 unpardonable indiscretion on my part, but some- 
 body told me, or at least I understood, that you 
 were engaged to him." 
 
 " Somebody- has told you a falsehood, then," she 
 replied, and, with a bow of rather strained dignity, 
 turned in at the gate of a house where a moment 
 before she had not had the remotest intention of 
 stopping. If she had been in a boat with him, she 
 would have jumped into the water sooner than pro- 
 tract the interview a moment after she had said that. 
 Mechanically she walked up the path and knocked 
 at the door. Until the lady of the house opened 
 it, she did not notice where she had stopped. 
 
 "Good afternoon, Madeline. I'm glad to see 
 you. You haven't made me a call this ever so 
 long." 
 
 " I'm so sorry Mrs. Tuttle, but I haven't time to 
 stop to day. He— have you got a— a pattern of a 
 working apron ? I'd like to borrow it." 
 
DR. UEIDEN:iOPF's PROCESS. 5I 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Now, Henry had not chanced to be at church 
 that first Sunday evening when Cordis obtained 
 an introduction to MadeHne, nor was he at Fanny 
 Miller's tea-party. Of the rapidly progressing 
 flirtation between his sweetheart and the 
 handsome drug-clerk, he had all this time no 
 suspicion whatever. Spending his days from 
 dawn to sunset in the shop among men, he was 
 not in the way of hearing gossip on that sort ot 
 subject, and Laura, who ordinarily kept him posted 
 on village news, had deemed it best to tell him as 
 yet nothing of her- apprehensions. She was aware 
 that the affection between her brother and Madeline 
 was chiefly on his side, and knew enough of her 
 wilfulness to be sure that any attempted interfer- 
 ence by him would only make matters worse. 
 Moreover, now that she had warned Cordis that 
 Madeline was preempted property, she hoped he 
 would turn his attention elsewhere. 
 
 And so, while half the village was agog over the 
 flirtation of the new drug-clerk with Madeline 
 Brand, and Laura was lying awake nights fretting 
 about it, Henry went gayly to and from his work in 
 a state of blissful ignorance. And it was very 
 blissful. He was exultant over the progress he had 
 made in his courtship at the picnic. He had told 
 
52 DR MEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 his love — he had kissed her. If he had not been 
 accepted, he had, at least, not been rejected, and 
 that was a measure of success quite enough to 
 intoxicate so ardent and humble a lover as he. 
 And, indeed, what lover might not have taken 
 courage at remembering the sweet pity that shone 
 in her eyes at the revelation of his love-lorn state ? 
 The fruition of his hopes, to which he had only 
 dared look forward as possibly awaiting, him some- 
 where in the dim future, was, maybe, almost at 
 hand. Circumstances combined to prolong these 
 rose-tinted dreams. A sudden press of orders made 
 it necessary to run the shop till late nights. He 
 contrived with difficulty to get out early one 
 evening so as to call on Madeline; but she had gone 
 out, and he failed to see her. It was some ten days 
 after the picnic that, on calling a second time, he 
 found her at home. It chanced to be the very 
 evening of the day on which the conversation 
 between Madeline and Cordis, narrated in the last 
 chapter, had taken place. 
 
 She did not come in till Henry had waited some 
 ime in the parlor, and then gave him her hand in a 
 v^ery Hfeless way. She said she had a bad head- 
 ache, and seemed disposed to leave the talking to 
 him. He spoke of the picnic, but she rather 
 sharply remarked that it was so long ago that she 
 had. forgotten all about it. It did seem very long 
 ago to her, but to him it was very fresh. . This -Gool 
 •ignoring of all that -had happened .that - day -in 
 modifying their relations at one blow Jcnocked the 
 bottom out of all his thinking for the past week, 
 
53 
 
 and left him, as it were, all in the air. While he 
 felt that the moment was not propitious for 
 pursuing that topic, he could not for the moment 
 turn his mind to anything else, and, as for 
 Madehne, it appeared to be a matter of entire 
 indifference to her whether anything further was 
 said on any subject. Finally, he remarked, with an 
 effort to which the result may appear dispro- 
 portionate, 
 
 " Mr. Taylor has been making quite extensive 
 alterations on his house hasn't he ? " 
 
 " I should think you ought to know, if any one. 
 You pass his house every day," was her response. 
 
 " Why, of course I know," he said, staring at hef . 
 
 " So I thought, but you said 'hasn't he ? ' And 
 naturally I presumed that you were not quite 
 certain." 
 
 She was evidently quizzing him, but her face 
 was inscrutable. She looked only as if patiently 
 and rather wearily explaining a misunderstanding. 
 As she played with her fan, she had an unmis- 
 takable expression of being slightly bored. 
 
 " Madeline, do you know what I should say 
 was the matter with you if you were a man? " he 
 said, desperately, yet trying to laugh. 
 
 " Well really " — and her eyes had a rather hard 
 expression — " if you prefer gentlemen's society, 
 you'd better seek it, instead of trying to get along 
 by supposing me to be a gentleman." 
 
 " It seems as if I couldn't say anything right," 
 said Henry. 
 
54 DR- HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 " I think you do talk a little strangely," she 
 admitted, with a faint smile. Her look was quite 
 like that of an uncomplaining martyr. 
 
 " What's the matter with you to-night. Made- 
 lain ? Tell me for God's sake 1 " he cried, over- 
 come with sudden grief and alarm. 
 
 " I thought I told you I had a headache, and 
 I really wish you wouldn't use profane language," 
 she replied, regarding him with a lack-luster 
 eyes. 
 
 " And that's all ? It's only a headache ? " 
 
 "That's quite enough, I'm sure. Would you 
 like me to have toothache besides ? " 
 
 " You know I didn't mean that." 
 
 " Well, earache, then ? " she said, wearily, allow- 
 ing her head to rest back on the top of her chair, 
 as if it were too much of an effort to hold it up, and 
 half shutting her eyes. 
 
 " Excuse me, I ought not to have kept you. I'll 
 go now." 
 
 " Don't hurry," she observed, languidly. 
 " I hope you'll feel better in the morning." 
 He offered her his hand, and she put hers in it 
 for an instant, but withdrew it without returning 
 his pressure, and he went away, sorely perplexed 
 and bitterly disappointed. 
 
 He would have been more puzzled if he 
 had been told that not only had Madeline not for- 
 gotten about what had happened at the picnic, 
 but had, in fact, thought of scarcely anything else 
 
Dr. heidenhoff's process. 55 
 
 during his call. It was that which made her so 
 hard with him, that lent such acid to her tone 
 and such cold aversion to her whole manner. 
 As he went from the house, she stood looking 
 after him through the parlor window, murmuring 
 to herself : 
 
 " Thank Heaven, I'm not engaged to him. 
 How could I think I would ever marry him ? 
 Oh, if a girl only knew ! " 
 
 Henry could not rest until he had seen her 
 again, and found out whether her coldness was a 
 mere freak of coquetry, or something more. One 
 evening when, thanks to the long twilight, it was 
 not yet dark, he called again. She came to the 
 door with hat and gloves on. Was she going out, 
 he asked. She admitted that she had been on the 
 point of going across the street to make a call 
 which had been too long delayed, but wouldn't 
 he come in. No, he would not detain her ; he 
 would call again. But he lingered a moment on 
 the steps while, standing on the threshold, she 
 played with a button of a glove. Suddenly he 
 raised his eyes and regarded her in a quite par- 
 ticular manner. She was suddenly absorbed with 
 her glove, but he fancied that her cheek slightly 
 flushed. Just at the moment when he was cal- 
 culating that she could no longer well avoid look- 
 ing up, she exclaimed •' 
 
 " Dear me : how vexatious ! there goes another 
 of those buttons. I shall have to sew it on again 
 before I go," and she looked at him with a charm- 
 ingly frank air of asking for sympathy, at the 
 
56 DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS, 
 
 same time that it conveyed the obvious idea that 
 she ought to lose no time in making the necessary 
 repairs. 
 
 " I v^^ill not keep you, then," he said, some- 
 what sadly, and turned away. 
 
 Was the accident intentional ? Did she want 
 to avoid him ? He could not help the thought, 
 and yet what could be more frank and sunshiny 
 than the smile with which she responded to his 
 parting salutation ? 
 
 The next Sunday Laura and he were at church 
 in the evening. 
 
 " I wonder why Madehne was not out. Do 
 you know?" he said, as they were walking 
 home. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " You're: not nearly so thick with her as you. 
 used to^be. What's the matter ? " 
 
 She did. not reply, for just then, at a turning 
 of the street,, they met the young lady of whom 
 they were speaking. She looked smiling and 
 happy, and very handsome, with a flush in either 
 cheek, and walking with her was the new drug- 
 clerk. She. seemed a little confused at meet- 
 ing Henry, and for a moment appeared to avoid 
 his glance. Then, with a certain bravado, oddly 
 mingled with a deprecating air, she raised her 
 eyes to his and bowed- 
 It was the first intimation he had had of the 
 true reason of her alienation. Mechanically he 
 walked on and on, too stunned to think as yet, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 57 
 
 feeling only that there' was a terrible time of think- 
 ing ahead. 
 
 " Hadn't we better turn back, dear ? " said 
 Laura, very gently. 
 
 He looked up. They were a mile or two out 
 of the village on a lonely country road. They 
 turned, and she said, softly, in the tone like the 
 touch of tender fingers on an aching spot : 
 
 " I knew it long ago, but I hadn't the heart 
 to tell you. She set her cap at him from the first. 
 Don't take it too much to heart. She is not 
 good enough for you." 
 
 Sweet compassion ! Idle words ! Is there 
 any such sense of ownership, reaching even to the 
 feeling of identity, as that which the lover has 
 in the one he loves ? His thoughts and affec- 
 tions, however short the time, have so grown 
 about her and incased her, as the hardened clay 
 imbeds the fossil flower buried ages ago. It rather 
 seems as if he had found her by quarrying in 
 the depths of his own heart than as if he had 
 picked her from the outside world, from among 
 foreign things, She was never foreign, else he 
 could not have that intuitive sense of intimateness 
 with her which makes each new trait which she 
 reveals, while a sweet surprise, yet seem in a 
 deeper sense familiar, as if answering to some pre- 
 existing ideal pattern in his own heart, as if it 
 were something that could not have been differ- 
 ent. In after years he may grow rich in land and 
 gold, but he never again will have such sense of 
 
58 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 absolute right and eternally foreordained owner- 
 ship in anything as he had long years ago in that 
 sweet girl whom some other fellow married. For, 
 alas 1 this seemingly inviolable divine title is really 
 no security at all, Love is liable to ten million 
 suits for breach of warranty. The title-deeds he 
 gives to lovers, taking for price their hearts' first- 
 fruits, turn out no titles at all. Half the time, 
 title to the same property is given to several 
 claimants, and the one to finall}. take possession 
 is often enough one who has no title from love at 
 all. 
 
 Henry had been hit hard, but there was a 
 dogged persistence in his disposition that would 
 not allow him to give up till he had tested his 
 fortune to the uttermost. His love was quite un- 
 mixed with vanity, for Madeline bad never given 
 him any real reason to think that she loved him, 
 and, therefore, the risk of any additional snub or 
 two counted for nothing to deter him. The very 
 next day he left the shop in the afternoon and 
 called on her. Her rather constrained and guarded 
 manner was as if she thought he had come to 
 call her to account, and was prepared for him. 
 He, on the contrary, tried to look as affable and 
 well satisfied as if he were the most prosperous of 
 lovers. When he asked her if she would go out 
 driving with him that afternoon, she was evidently 
 taken quite off her guard. For recrimination 
 she was prepared, but not for this smiling pro- 
 posal. But she recovered herself in an instant, and 
 said ; 
 
DR. HEIDENI-IOFf's PROCESS. 59 
 
 " I'm really very much obliged. It is very 
 considerate of you, but my mother is not very 
 well this afternoon, and I feel that I ought not to 
 leave her." 
 
 Smothering a sick feeling of discouragement, he 
 said, as cheerfully as possible. 
 
 " I'm very sorry, indeed. Is your mother 
 seriously sick ? " 
 
 " Oh no, thank you. I presume she will be quite 
 well by morning." 
 
 " Won't you, perhaps, go to-morrow afternoon, 
 if she is better ? The river road which you admire 
 so much is in all its midsummer glory." 
 
 " Thank you. Really, you are quite too good, 
 but I think riding is rather likely to give me the 
 headache lately." 
 
 The way she answered him, without being in 
 the least uncivil, left the impression on his mind 
 that he had been unduly persistent. There was 
 an awkward silence of a few moments, and he 
 was just about to burst forth with he knew not 
 what exclamations and entreaties, when Madeline 
 arose, saying : 
 
 " Excuse me a moment ; I think I hear my 
 mother calHng," and left the room. 
 
 She was gone some time, and returned and sat 
 down with an absent and pre-occupied expression of 
 face, and he did not hnger. 
 
 The next Thursday evening he was at conference 
 meeting, intending to walk home with Madeline if 
 she would let him ; to ask her at least. She was 
 
6o DR, heidenhoff's process. 
 
 there, as usual, and sat at the melodeon. A few 
 minutes before nine Cordis came in, evidently for 
 the mere purpose of escorting her home. Henry 
 doggedly resolved that she should choose betvi^een 
 them, then and there, before all the people. The 
 closing hymn vi^as sung, and the buzz of the depart- 
 ing congregation sounded in his ears, as if it were 
 far away. He rose and took his place near the 
 door, his face pale, his lips set, regardless of all 
 observers. Cordis, with whom he was unacquainted 
 save by sight, stood near by, good-humouredly 
 smiling, and. greeting the people as they passed 
 out. 
 
 In general, Madeline/ liked well enough the 
 excitement of electing between-rival suitors,, but she 
 would rather, far rather, have avoided this public 
 choice to-night. She had begun to be sorry for 
 Henry. She was as long as possible about closing 
 the melodeon. She opened and closed it again. 
 At length, finding no further excuse for delaying, 
 she came slowly down the aisle, looking a little 
 pale herself. Several of the village young folks 
 who understood the situation lingered smiling 
 at one another, to see the fun out, and Cordis 
 himself recognised his rival's tragical look with 
 an amused expression, at the same time that he 
 seemed entirely disposed to cross lances with him. 
 
 As Madeline approached the door, Henry 
 stepped forward and huskily asked if he might 
 take her home. Bowing to him with a gracious 
 smile of declination, she said, "Thanks," and, 
 taking Cordis's arm, passed out with him, 
 
DR. heid:.nhoff's process. 6l 
 
 As they c£mp lorth into the shadow of the night» 
 beyond the illumination of the porch lamps of the 
 church, Cordis observed : 
 
 " Really, that was quite tragical. I half expected 
 he would pull out a revolver and shoot us both. 
 Poor fellow 1 I'm sorry for him." 
 
 " He was sorrier than you are glad, I dare say," 
 said Madeline. 
 
 " Well, I don't know about that," he replied ; 
 " I'm as glad as I can be, and I suppose he's as 
 sorry as he can be. I can't imagine any man in 
 love with such a girl as you not being one or the 
 other all the while." 
 
 But the tone was a little, a very little, colder 
 than the words, and her quick ear caught the 
 difference. 
 
 " What's the matter ? Are you vexed about 
 anything? What have I done ? " she asked, in a 
 tone of anxious deprecation which no other person 
 but Harison Cordis had ever heard from her 
 lips. 
 
 " You have done nothing," he answered passing 
 his arm around her waist in a momentary embrace 
 of reassurance. ■ " It is I that am ill-tempered. I 
 couldn't help thinking from the way this Burr 
 pursues you that there must have been something 
 -in the story about your having been engaged, 
 after all." 
 
 " It is not true. I never was engaged. I 
 couldn't bear him. I don't Hke him. Only he— r 
 he—" 
 
62 DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 
 
 " I don't want to pry into your secrets. Don't 
 make any confessions to me. I have no right to 
 call you to account," he interrupted her, rather 
 stiffly. 
 
 " Please don't say that. Oh, please don't talk 
 that way ! " she cried out as if the words had hurt 
 her like a knife. " He Hked me, but I didn't hke 
 him. I truly didn't. Don't you believe me ? 
 What shall I do if you don't ? " 
 
 It must not be supposed that Cordis had inspired 
 so sudden and strong a passion in Madeline 
 without a reciprocal sentiment. He had been 
 infatuated from the first with the brilliant, beautiful 
 girl, and his jealousy was at least half real. 
 Her piteous distress at his slight show of cold- 
 ness melted him to tenderness. There was an 
 impassioned reconciliation, to which poor Henry 
 was the sacrifice. Now that he threatened to 
 cost her the smiles of the man she loved, her 
 pity for him was changed mto resentment. She 
 said to herself that it was mean and cruel in him 
 to keep pursuing her. It never occurred to her 
 to find Cordis's conduct unfair in reproaching 
 her for not having lived solely for him, before 
 she knew even of his existence. She was rather 
 inclined to side with him, and blame herself for 
 having lacked an intuitive prescience of his 
 coming, which should have kept her a nun in heart 
 and soul. 
 
 The next evening about dusk Henry was wander- 
 ing sadly and aimlessly about the streets, when he 
 met MadeHne face to face. At first she seemed 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 63 
 
 rather unpleasantly startled, and made as if she 
 would pass him without giving him an opportunity 
 to speak to her. Then she appeared to change her 
 mind, and, stopping directly before him, said, in a 
 low voice, 
 
 " Wont you please leave me alone, after this ? 
 Your attentions are not welcome." 
 
 V/ithout giving him a chance to reply, she passed 
 on and walked swiftly up the street. He leaned 
 against the fence, and stood motionless for a long 
 time. That was all that was wanting to make his 
 loss complete — an angry word from her. At last 
 his lips moved a little, and slowly formed these 
 words, in a husky, very pitiful whisper : 
 
 "That's the end." 
 
64 CR. meidenhoff's process. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 There was one person, at least, in the'village who 
 had viewed the success of the new drug-clerk in 
 carrying off the belle of Newville with entire com- 
 placency, and that was Ida Lewis, the girl with a 
 poor complexion and beautiful brown eyes, who 
 had cherished a rather hopeless inchnation for 
 Henry ; now that he had lost that bold girl, she 
 tremulously assured herself, perhaps it was not 
 quite so hopeless. Laura, too, had an idea that 
 such might possibly be the case, and hoping at 
 least to distract her brother, about whom she was 
 becoming quite anxious, she had Ida over to tea 
 once or twice, and, by various other devices which 
 with a clever woman are matters of course, managed 
 to throw her in his way. 
 
 He was too much absorbed to take any notice 
 of this at first, but, one evening when Ida was at 
 tea with them, it suddenly flashed upon him., and 
 bis face reddened with annoyed embarrassment. 
 He had never felt such a cold anger at Laura as at 
 that moment. He had it in his heart to say some- 
 thing very bitter to her. Would she not, at least, 
 respect his grief? He had ado to control the im- 
 pulse that prompted him to ri.se and leave the 
 table. And then, with that suddenness character- 
 istic of highly wrought moods, his feeling changed, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 65 
 
 and he discovered how soft-hearted his own sorrow 
 had made him toward all who suffered in the 
 same way. His eyes smarted with pitifulness as 
 he noted the pains with which the little girl oppo- 
 site him had tried to make the most of her humble 
 charms in the hope of catching his eye. And 
 the very poverty of those charms made her efforts 
 the more pathetic. He blamed his eyes for the 
 hard clearness with which they noted the short- 
 comings of the small, unformed features, the 
 freckled skin, the insignificant and niggardly 
 contour, and for the cruelty of the comparison 
 they suggested between all this and Madeline's 
 rich beauty. A boundless pity poured out of 
 his heart to cover and transfigure these defects, 
 and he had an impulse to make up to her for 
 them, if he could, by sacrificing himself to her, if 
 she desired. If she felt toward him as he toward 
 Madehne, it were worth his life to save the pity 
 of another such heart-breaking. So should he 
 atone, perhaps, for the suffering Madeline had 
 given him. 
 
 After tea he went by himself to nurse these 
 wretched thoughts, and, although the sight of Ida 
 had suggested them, he went on to think of him- 
 self, and soon became so absorbed in his own 
 misery that he quite forgot about her, and, failing 
 to rejoin the girls that evening, Ida had to go home 
 alone, which was a great disappointment to her. 
 But it was, perhaps, quite as well, on the whole, 
 for both of them, that he was not thrown with her 
 again that evening. 
 
g6 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 It is never fair to take for granted that the 
 greatness of a sorrow or -a loss is a great measure 
 of the fault of the one who causes it. Madeline 
 was not willingly cruel. She felt sorry in a way 
 for Henry whenever his set lips and haggard face 
 came under her view, but sorry in a dim and 
 distant way, as one going on a far and joyous 
 journey is sorry for the former associates he 
 leaves behind, associates whose faces already, ere 
 he goes, begin to grow faded and indistinct. At 
 the wooing of Cordis her heart had awaked, and 
 in the high, new joy of loving, she scorned the 
 tame delight of being loved, which until then, had 
 been her only idea of the passion. 
 
 Henry presently discovered that, to stay in 
 the village a looker-on while the love affair of 
 Madeline and Cordis progressed to its consumma- 
 tion, was going to be too much for him. Instead 
 of his getting used to the situation, it seemed to 
 grow daily more insufferable. Every evening the 
 thought that they were together made him feverish 
 and restless till towards midnight, when the 
 reflection that Cordis had surely by this time 
 left her, came a possibility of sleep. 
 
 And yet. all this time, he was not conscious 
 of any special hate towards that young man. If 
 he had been in his power he would probably have 
 left him unharmed. He could not, indeed, have 
 raised his hand against anything which Madeline 
 cared for. However great his animosity had 
 been, that fact would have made his rival taboo 
 to him. That Madeline had turned away from 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 67 
 
 him was the great matter. Whither she was 
 turned was of subordinate importance. His 
 trouble was that she loved Cordis, not that Cordis 
 loved her. It is only low and narrow natures 
 which can find vent for their love disappoint- 
 ments in rage against their successors. In the 
 strictest, truest sense, indeed, although it is cer- 
 tainly a hard saying, there is no room in a clear 
 mind for such a feeling as jealously. For the way 
 in which every two hearts approach each other is 
 necessarily a peculiar combination of individualities, 
 never before and never after exactly duplicated 
 in human expevience. So that, if we can 
 conceive of a woman truly loving several lovers, 
 whether successively or simultaneously, they 
 would not be rivals, for the manner of her love 
 for each, and the manner of each one's love for 
 her, is pecuhar and single, even as if they two 
 were alone in the world. The higher the mental 
 grade of the persons concerned, the wider their 
 sympathies, and the more delicate their perceptions, 
 the more true is this. 
 
 Henry had been recently offered a very good 
 position in an arms manufactory in Boston, and, 
 having made up his mind to leave the village, he 
 wrote to accept it, and promptly followed his 
 letter, having first pledged his sole Newville corres- 
 pondent, Laura, to make no references to Madeline 
 in her letters. 
 
 " If they should be married," he was particular 
 to say, " don't tell me about it till some time 
 afterward." 
 
63 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 Perhaps he worked the better in his new place 
 because he was unhappy. The foe of good work 
 is too easy self-complacency, too read}' self- 
 satisfaction, and the tendency to a pleased and 
 relaxed contemplation of life and one's surroundings, 
 growing out of a well-to-do state. Such a 
 smarting sense of defeat, of endless aching loss as 
 filled his mind at this time, was a most exacting 
 background for his daily achievements in business 
 and money-making to show up against. He had 
 lost that power of enjoying rest which is at once 
 the reward and limitation of human endeavor. 
 Work was his nepenthe, and the difference 
 between poor, superficial work and the best, most 
 absorbing, was simply that between a weaker and 
 a stronger opiate. He prospered in his affairs, 
 was promoted to a position of responsibility with 
 a good salary, and, moreover, was able to dispose 
 of a patent in gun-barrels at a handsome 
 price. 
 
 With the hope of distracting his mind from 
 morbid brooding over what was past helping, he 
 went into socie'jy, and endeavoured to interest 
 himself in young ladies. But in these efforts his 
 success was indifferent. Whenever he began to 
 flatter himself that he was gaining a philosophical 
 calm, the glimpse of some face on the street that 
 reminded him of Madeline's, an accent of a voice 
 that recalled hers, the sight of her in a dream, 
 brought back in a moment the old thrall and the 
 old bitterness with undiminished strength. 
 
 Eight or nine months aft^r he had left hoRie 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 69 
 
 the longing to return and see what had happened 
 became irresistible. Perhaps, after all — 
 
 Although this faint glimmer of a doubt was 
 of his own making, and existed only because he 
 had forbidden Laura to tell him to the contrary, 
 he actually took some comfort in it. While he 
 did not dare to put the question to Laura, yet he 
 allowed himself to dream that something might 
 possibly have happened to break off the match. 
 He was far, indeed, from formally consenting to 
 entertain such a hope. He professed to himself 
 that he had no doubt that she was married and 
 lost to him for ever. Had anything happened to 
 break off the match, Laura would certainly have 
 lost no time in telling him such good news. It 
 was childishness to fancy aught else. But no 
 effort of the reason can quite close the windows 
 of the heart against hopo, and, like a furtive ray 
 of sunshine finding its way through a closed shutter, 
 the thought that, after all, she might be free 
 surreptitiously illumined the dark place in which 
 he sat. 
 
 When the train stopped at Newville, he slipped 
 through the crowd at the station with the briefest 
 possible greeting to the acquaintances he saw, 
 and set out to gain his father's house by a back 
 street. 
 
 On the way he met Harry Tuttle, and could 
 not avoid stopping to exchange a few words with 
 him. As they talked, he was in a miserable panic 
 of apprehension lest Harry should blurt out some- 
 thing about Madeline's being msirried, He felt 
 
70 • DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 that he could only bear to hear it from Laura's 
 lips. Whenever the other opened his mouth to 
 speak, a cold dew started out on Henry's forehead 
 for fear he was going to make some allusion to 
 Madeline, and, when at last they separated without 
 his having done so, there was such weakness in 
 his limbs as one feels who first walks after a 
 sickness. 
 
 He saw his folly how, his madness, in 
 allowing himself to dally with a baseless hope, 
 which, while never daring to own its own existence, 
 had yet so mingled its enervating poison 
 with every vein that he had now no strength left 
 to endure the disappointment so certain and so 
 near. At the very gate of his father's house he 
 paused. A powerful impulse seized him to fly. 
 It was not yet too late. Why had he come ? He 
 would go back to ^Boston, and write Laura by the 
 next mail, and adjure her to tell him nothing. 
 Some time he might bear to hear the truth, but 
 not to-day, not now ; no, not now. What had he 
 been thinking of, to risk it ? He would get away 
 where nobody could reach him to slay with a 
 word this shadow of a hope which had become 
 such a necessity of life to him, as is opium to 
 the victim whose strength it has sapped and alone 
 replaces. It was too late ! Laura, as she sat sewing 
 by the window, had looked up and seen him, 
 and now as he came slowly up the walk she ap- 
 peared at the door, full of exclamations of surprise 
 and pleasure. He went in, and they sat 
 down. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 71 
 
 " I thought I'd run over and see how you all 
 were," he said, with a ghastly smile. 
 
 " I'm so glad you did. Father was wondering 
 only this morning if you were never coming to see 
 us again." 
 
 " He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. 
 
 " I thought I'd just run over and see you." 
 
 " Yes, I'm so glad you did." 
 
 She did not show that she noticed his merely 
 having said the same thing over. 
 
 " Are you pretty well this spring ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, I'm pretty well." 
 
 " Father was so much pleased about your patent 
 He's ever so proud of you." 
 
 After a pause, during which Henry looked 
 nervously from point to point about the room, he 
 said, 
 
 " Is he ? " 
 
 " Yes, very, and so am I." 
 
 There was a long silence, and Laura took up 
 her work-basket, and bent her face over it, and 
 seemed to have a good deal of trouble in finding 
 some article in it. 
 
 Suddenly he said, in a quick, spasmodic way, 
 
 " Is Madeline married ? " 
 
 Good God ! would she never speak ! 
 
 " No," she answered, with a falling inflection. 
 
 His heart, which had stopped beating, sent a 
 flood of blood through every artery. But she had 
 spoken as if it were the worst of news, instead of 
 
72 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 good. Ah ! could it be ? In all his thoughs, 
 in all his dreams by night or day, he had never 
 thought, he had never dreamed of that. 
 
 " Is she dead ? " he asked slowly, with diffi- 
 culty, his will stamping the shuddering thought 
 into words, as the steel die stamps coin from 
 strips of .metal. 
 
 " No," she replied again, with the same ill-boding 
 tone. 
 
 " In God's name, what is it ? " he cried, springing 
 to his feet. Laura looked out at the window so that 
 she might not meet his eye as she answered, in a 
 barely audible voice. 
 
 "There was a scandal, and he deserted her; 
 and afterward — only last week — she. ran away, no- 
 body knows where, but they think to Boston." 
 
 It was about two o'clock in the afternoon 
 when Henry heard the fate of Madeline. By 
 four o'clock he was on his way back to Boston. 
 The expression of his face as he sits in the car is 
 not that which might be expected under the cir- 
 cumstances. It is not that of a man crushed by 
 a hopeless calamity, but rather of one sorely 
 stricken indeed, but still resolute, supported by 
 some strong determination which is not without 
 hope. 
 
 Before leaving Newville he called on Mrs. 
 Brand, who still lived in the same house. His 
 interview with her was very painful. The sight of 
 him set her into vehement weeping, and it was 
 long before he could get her to talk. In the in- 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 73 
 
 lustice of her sorrow, she reproached him almost 
 bitterly for not marrying Madeline, instead of 
 going off and leaving her a victim to Cordis. It 
 was rather hard for him fco be reproached in this 
 way, but he did not think of saying anything m 
 self-justification. He was ready to take blame 
 upon himself. He remembered no more now how 
 she had rejected, rebuffed, and dismissed him. 
 He told himself that he had cruelly deserted 
 her, and hung his head before the mother's 
 reproaches. 
 
 The room in which they sat was the same in 
 which he had waited that morning of the picnic, 
 while in his presence she had put the finishing 
 touches to her toilet. There, above the table, 
 hung against the wall the self-same mirror that 
 on that morning had given back the picture of a 
 girl in white, with crimson braid about her neck 
 and wrists, and a red feather in the hat so jauntily 
 perched above the low forehead — altogether a 
 maiden exceedingly to be desire, 1. Perhaps, some- 
 where, she was standing before a mirror at that 
 moment. But what sort of a flush is it upon her 
 cheeks ? What sort of a look is it in her eyes ? 
 What is this fell shadow that has passed upon her 
 face ? 
 
 By the time Henry was ready to leave, the 
 poor mother had ceased her upbraidings, and had 
 yielded quite to the sense of a sympathy, founded 
 in a loss as great as her own, which his presence 
 gave her. He was the only one in all the world 
 from whom she could have accepted sympathy, 
 
^sji DR. heideMhoff's process. 
 
 and in her lonely desolation it was very sweeti 
 And at the last, when, as he was about to go, her 
 grief burst forth afresh, he put his arm around 
 her and drew her head to his shoulder, and tenderly 
 soothed her, and stroked the thin gray hair, till at 
 last the long, shuddering sobs grew a little calmer. 
 It was natural that he should be the One to comfort 
 her. It was his privilege. In the adoptio^n of 
 sorrow, and not of joy, he had taken this mother 
 of his love to be his mother. 
 
 " Don't give her up," he said. " I will find her 
 if she is alive." 
 
DR, U::iDa.\'UOF»''S PROCESS. 75 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A SEARCH, continued unintermittingly for a 
 week among the hotels and lodging-houses of Bos- 
 ton, proved finally successful. He found her. As 
 she opened the door of the miserable apartment 
 which she occupied, and saw who it was that had 
 knocked, the hard, unbeautiful red of shame 
 covered her face. She would have closed the door 
 against him, had he not quickly stepped within* 
 Her eyelids fluttered a moment, and then she met 
 his gaze with a look of reckless hardihood. Still 
 holding the door half open, she said : 
 
 " Henry Burr, what do you want ? " 
 
 The masses of her dark hair hung low about her 
 neck in disorder, and even in that first glance his 
 eye had noted a certain negligent untidiness about 
 her toilet most different to her former ways. 
 Her face was worn, and strangely aged and sad- 
 dened, but beautiful still with the quenchless beauty 
 of the glorious eyes, though sleepless nights had left 
 their dark traces round them. 
 
 " What do you want ? Why do you come here ? " 
 she demanded again, in harsh, hard tones ; for 
 he had been too much moved in looking at her to 
 reply at once. 
 
 Now, however, he took the door handle out of 
 
^6 r>R. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 her hand and closed the door, and said, with only 
 the boundless tenderness of his moist eyes to mend 
 the bluntness of the words : 
 
 " Madeline, I want you. I want you for my 
 wife." 
 
 The faintest possible trace of scorn was percep- 
 tible about her lips, but her former expression of 
 hard indifference was otherwise quite unchanged as 
 she replied, in a spiritle-ss voice : 
 
 " So you came here to mock me ? It was taking 
 a good deal of trouble, but it is fair you should have 
 your revenge." 
 
 Hecame close up to her. 
 
 " I'm not mocking. I'm in earnest. I'm one of 
 those fellows who can never love but one woman, 
 and love her for ever and ever. If there were not 
 a scrap of you left bigger than your thumb, I'd 
 rather have it than any woman in the world." 
 
 And now her face changed. There came into it the 
 wistful look of those before whom passes a vision of 
 happiness not for them, a look such as might be in 
 the face of a doomed spirit which, floating by, 
 . should catch a glimpse of heavenly meads, and be 
 glad to have had it, although its own way lay 
 toward perdition. 
 
 With a sudden impulse she dropped upon her 
 knee and seizing the hem of his coat pressed it to 
 ■her lips, and Jthen, before he could catch her, sprang 
 ■away, and stood wjth one- arm extended -toward 
 him, the palm turned outward warning him not 
 to touch her. Her eyes were marvelously soft- 
 
DR. IIEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 7^7 
 
 ened with the tears that suffused them, and she 
 said : 
 
 " I thank you, Henry. You- are very good. I 
 did not think any man could be so good. Now I 
 remember you always were very good to me. It 
 will make the laudanum taste much sweeter. No 1 
 no ! don't ! Pity my shame. Spare me that ! 
 Oh, don't ! " 
 
 But he was stronger than she, and kissed her. 
 It was the second time he had ever done it. Her 
 eyes flashed angrily, but that was instantly past, 
 and she fell upon a chair crying as if her heart 
 would break, her hands dropping nervelessly by 
 her sides ; for this was that miserable, desolate sor- 
 row which does not care to hide its flowing tears 
 and wrung face. 
 
 " Oh, you might have spared me that ! Oh, 
 God ! was it not hard enough before ? " she 
 sobbed. 
 
 In his loving stupidity, thinking to reassure 
 her, he had wounded the pride of shame, the last 
 retreat of self-respect, that cruellest hurt of all. 
 There was a long silence. She seemed to have 
 forgotten that he was there. Looking down upon 
 her. as she sat desolate, degraded, hopeless before 
 him, .not canng.to cover her face, his heart swelled 
 till -it seemed as if it would biirst, with such a 
 .sense of piteous loyalty and sublimed devotion as 
 a faithful subject in the brave old times -might 
 have felt toward his queen whom Jhe had found in 
 exile, rags, and penury. Deserted by gods and 
 
78 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 men she might be, but his queen for ever she was, 
 whose feet he was honored to kiss. But what a 
 gulf between feeling this and making her understand 
 his feeling ! 
 
 At length, when her sobs had ceased, he said, 
 quietly : 
 
 " Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt your 
 feelings." 
 
 " It's all the same. It's no matter," she an- 
 swered, listlessly, wiping her eyes with her hand, 
 " I wish you would go away, though, and leave me 
 alone. What do you want with me ? " 
 
 " I want what I have always wanted. I want you 
 for my wife." 
 
 She looked at him with stupid amazement, as 
 if the real meaning of this already once declared 
 desire had only just distinctly reached her mind, 
 or as if the effect of its first announcement had 
 been quite effaced by the succeeding outburst. 
 
 " Why, I thought you knew. You can't have 
 heard — about me," she said. 
 
 " I have heard, I know all," he exclaimed, 
 taking a step forward and standing over her. 
 "Forgive, me, darling, forgive me for being almost 
 glad when I, .heard that you were free, and not 
 married out of; my reach. I can't think of any- 
 thing except that I've found you. It is you, isn't 
 it ? It is you. I don't eare what's happened to you, 
 if it is only you." - 
 
 As he spoke in this vehement, fiery way, she 
 had been regarding him with an expression of 
 
bk. HEJDENHOFF S PRbCfiSS. ^9 
 
 faint curiosity. " I believe you do really mean it," 
 she said, wonderingly, lingering over the words; 
 "you always were a queer fellow." 
 
 " Mean it I " he exclaimed, kneeling before her, 
 his voice all tremulous with the hope which the 
 slightly yielding intonation of her words had given 
 him. " Yes — yes — I mean it." 
 
 The faint ghost of a smile, which only brought 
 out the sadness of her face, as a taper in a crypt 
 reveals its gloom, hovered about her eyes. 
 
 "Poor boy!" she said, " I've treated you very 
 badly. I was going to make an end of myself 
 this afternoon, but I will wait till you are tired of 
 your fancy for me. It will make but little differ- 
 ence. There ! there ! Please don't kiss me." 
 
8o DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 He did not insist on their marriage taking 
 place at once, altiiough in hex mood of dull indif- 
 ference she would not have objected to anything 
 he might have proposed. It was his hope that 
 after a while she might become calmer and more 
 cheerful. He hoped to take in his, at the altar, a 
 hand a little less like that of a dead person. 
 
 Introducing her as his betrothed wife, he found 
 her very pleasant lodgings with an excellent family 
 where he was acquainted, provided her with books 
 and a piano, took her constantly out to places of 
 amusement, and, in every way which his ingenuity 
 could suggest, endeavored to distract and divert 
 her. To all this she offered neither objection nor 
 suggestion, nor did she, beyond the usual conven- 
 tional responses, show the slightest gratitude. It 
 was as if she took it for granted that he under- 
 stood, as she did, that all this was being done for 
 himself and not for her, she being quite past hav- 
 ing anything done for her. Her only recognition 
 of the reverential and considerate tenderness which 
 he showed her was an occasional air of wonder 
 that cut him to the quick. Shame, sorrow, and 
 despair had incrusted her heart with a hard shell, 
 impenetrable to genial emotions. Nor would all 
 
DR. HEIDHNIIOI-k's PROCESS. 8l 
 
 his love help him to get over the impression that 
 she was no longer an acquaintance and familiar 
 friend, but somehow a stranger. 
 
 So far as he could find out, she did absolutely 
 nothing all day except to sit brooding. He could 
 not discover that she so much as opened the books 
 and magazines he sent her, and, to the best of his 
 knowledge, she made little more use of her piano. 
 His calls were sadly dreary affairs. He would ask 
 perhaps half a dozen questions, which he had 
 spent much care in framing with a view to inter- 
 esting her. She would reply in monosyllables, 
 with sometimes a constrained smile or two, and 
 then, after sitting a while in silence, he would 
 take his hat and bid her good evening. 
 
 She always sat nowadays in an attitude which 
 he had never seen her adopt in former times, her 
 hands lying in her lap before her, and an absent 
 expression On her face. As he looked at her sit- 
 ting thus, and recalled her former vivacious self- 
 assertion and ever-new caprices, he was overcome 
 with the sadness of the contrast. ^ 
 
 Whenever he asked her about her health,, she 
 replied that she was well ; and, indeed, she had 
 that appearance. Grief is slow to sap the basis of 
 a healthy physical constitution. She retained all 
 the contour of cheek and rounded fullness of figure 
 which had first captivated his fancy in the days, as 
 it seemed, so long ago. 
 
 He took her often to the theatre, because in the 
 action of the play she seemed at times momentarily 
 
 F 
 
82 Dk. Heideniioff's process. 
 
 carried out of herself. Once, when they were 
 coming home from a play, she called attention to 
 some feature of it. It was the first independent 
 remark she made since he had brought her to her 
 lodgings. In itself it was of no importance at all, 
 but he was overcome with delight, as people are 
 delighted with the first words that show returning 
 interest in earthly matters on the part of a con- 
 valescent friend whose soul has long been hovering 
 on the borders of death. It would sound laughable 
 to explain how much he made of that little 
 remark, how he spun it out, and turned it in 
 and out, and returned to it for days after- 
 ward. But it remained isolated. She did not 
 make another. 
 
 Nevertheless, her mind was not so entirely torpid 
 as it appeared, nor was she so absolutely self" 
 absorbed. One idea was rising day by day out of 
 the dark confusion of her thoughts, and that was 
 the goodness and the generosity of her lover. In 
 this appreciation there was not the faintest glow 
 of gratitude. She left herself wholly out of the 
 account as only one could do with whom wretched- 
 ness has abolished for the time all interest in self. 
 She was personalty past being benefited. Her 
 sense of his love and generosity was as disinterested 
 as if some other person had been their object. 
 Her admiration was such as one feels for a hero 
 of history or fiction. 
 
 Often, when all within hei" Seemed growing 
 hard and still and dead, she felt that crying would 
 make her feel better. At. such times, to help her 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 83 
 
 to cry, for the tears did not flow easily, she would 
 sit down to the piano, the only times she ever 
 touched it, and play over some of the simp'e airs 
 associated with her life at home. Sometimes, 
 after playing and crying a while, she would lapse 
 into sweetly mournful day-dreams of how happy 
 she might have been if she had returned Henry's 
 love in those old days. She wondered in a puzzled 
 way why it was that she had not. It seemed 
 so strange to her now that she could have failed 
 in doing so. But all this time it was only as a 
 might have been that she thought of loving him, 
 as one who feels himself mortally sick thinks of 
 what he might have done when he was well, as a 
 life convict thinks of what he might have done 
 when free, as a disembodied spirit might think of 
 what it might have done when living. The 
 consciousness of her disgrace, ever with her, had, in 
 the past month or two, built up an impassable 
 wall between her past life and her present state 
 of existence. She no longer thought of herself in 
 the present tense, still less the future. 
 
 He had not kissed her since that kiss at their 
 first interview which threw her into such a 
 paroxysm of weeping. But one evening, when she 
 had been more silent and dull than usual, and 
 more unresponsive to his efforts to interest her, as 
 he rose to go he drew her a moment to his side 
 and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to 
 find some expression for the tenderness so cruelly 
 balked of any outflow in words. He went quickly 
 out, but she continued to stand motionless, in 
 
84 DR. heidenhoff's procj.ss. 
 
 the attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery. 
 There was a frightened look in her dilated eyes. 
 Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair with 
 a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the 
 tint of blissful shame with which the cheeks 
 announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She threw 
 herself upon the sofa, and buried her scorched 
 face in the pillow, while her form shook with dry 
 sobs. 
 
 Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting 
 cicatrice of a hard indifference from her smarting 
 shame, and it was as if for the first time she 
 were made fully conscious of the desperation of her 
 condition. 
 
 The maiden who finds her stainless purity all 
 too lusterless a gift for him she loves, may fancy 
 what were the feelings of Madeline, as love with 
 its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. 
 With what lilies of virgin innocence would she 
 fain have rewarded her lover ! But her lilies were 
 yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an 
 unworn crown would she have crowned him ! but 
 she had rifled her maiden regalia to adorn an 
 impostor. And love came to her now, not as to 
 others, but whetting the fangs of remorse and 
 blowing the fires of shame. 
 
 But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made 
 certain fiom the first instance of her new conscious- 
 ness, namely, that since she loved him she could 
 not keep her promise to marry him. In her pre- 
 vious mood of dead indifference to all things, it had 
 not mattered to her one way or the other. Reck- 
 
PR. heidenhoff's process. 85 
 
 less what became of her, she had only had a feel- 
 ing that seeing he had been so good he ought to 
 have any satisfaction he could find in possessing 
 the leavings of her. But what her indifference 
 would have abandoned to him, her love could not 
 endure the thought of giving. The worthlessness 
 of the gift, which before had not concerned her, 
 now made its giving impossible. While before 
 she had thought with indifference of submitting 
 to a love she did not return, now that she returned 
 it the idea of being happy in it seemed to her 
 guilty and shameless. Thus to gather the honey 
 of happiness from her own abasement was a further 
 degradation, compared with which she could now 
 almost respect herself. The consciousness that she 
 had taken pleasure in that kiss made her seem to 
 herself a brazen thing. 
 
 Her heart ached with a helpless yearning over 
 him for the disappointment she knew he must 
 now suffer at her hands. She tried, but in vain, 
 to feel that she might, after all, marry him, 
 might do this crowning violence to her nature, 
 and accept a shameful happiness for his 
 sake. 
 
 One morning a bitter thing happened to her. 
 She had slept unusually well, and her dreams had 
 been sweet and serene, untinged by any shadow of 
 her waking thoughts, as if, indeed, the visions in- 
 tended for the sleeping brain of some fortunate 
 woman had by mistake strayed into hers. For a 
 while she had lain, half dozing half awake, plea- 
 santly conscious of the soft, warm bed, and only 
 
86 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 half emerged from the atmosphere of dreamland. 
 As at last she opened her eyes, the newly risen sun, 
 bright from his ocean hath, was shining into the 
 room, and the birds were singing. A lilac bush 
 before the window was moving in the breeze, and 
 he shadows of its twigs were netting the sun-beams 
 m the wall as they danced to and fro. 
 
 The spirit of the jocund morn quite carried 
 her away, and all unthinkingly she bounded out 
 into the room and stood there with a smile of 
 sheer delight upon her face. She had forgotten 
 all about her shame and sorrow. For an instant 
 they were as completely gone from her mind as 
 if they had never been, and for that instant no- 
 where did the sun's far-reaching eye rest on a 
 blither or more innocent face. Then memory 
 laid its icy finger on her heart and stilled its 
 bounding pulse. The glad smile went out, like a 
 taper quenched in Acheron, and she fell prone upon 
 the floor, crying with hard, dry sobs, " O God ! O 
 God ! O God ! ." ^ 
 
 That day, and for many days afterwards, she 
 thought again and again of that single happy in- 
 stant ere memory reclaimed its victim. It was 
 the first for so long a time, and it was so very 
 sweet, like a drop of water to one in torment. 
 What a heaven a life must be which had many 
 such moments ! Was it possible that once, long 
 ago, her life had been such an one —that she could 
 awake mornings and not be afraid of remember- 
 ing ? Had there ever been a time when the ravens 
 of shairif and remorse had not p'^rched above her 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 8/ 
 
 bed as she slept, waiting her waking to plunge their 
 beaks afresh into her heart ? That instant of 
 happiness which had been given her, how full it 
 had been of blithe thanks to God and sympathy 
 with the beautiful life of the world ! Surely it 
 showed that she was not bad that she could have 
 such a moment. It showed her heart was pure ; 
 it was only her memory that was foul. It was in 
 vain that she swept and washed all within, and 
 was good, when all the while her memory, like 
 a ditch from a distant morass, emptied its vile 
 stream of recollections into her heart, poisoning a'' 
 the issues of life. 
 
 Years before, in one of the periodical religious 
 revivals at Newville, she had passed through the 
 usual girlish experience of conversion. Now, 
 indeed, was a time when the heavenly compensa- 
 tions to which religion invites the thoughts of 
 the sorrowful might surely have been a source of 
 some relief. But a certain cruel clearness of vision, 
 or so at least it seemed to her, made all reflections 
 on this theme but an aggravation of her 
 despair. Since the shadow had fallen on her life, 
 with every day the sense of shame and grief had 
 grown more insupportable. In proportion as her 
 loathing oi the sin had grown, her anguish on 
 account of it had increased. It was a poison-tree 
 which her tears watered and caused to shoot forth 
 yet deeper roots, yet wider branches, overspreading 
 her life with ever denser, more noxious shadows. 
 Since, then, on earth the puriiication of repent- 
 ance does but deepen the soul's anguish over 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS 
 
 the past, how should it be otherwise in heaven, 
 all through eternity ? The pure in heart that see 
 God, thought the unhappy girl, must only be those 
 that have always been so, for such as become pure 
 by repentance and tears do but see their impurity 
 plainer every day. 
 
 Her horror of such a heaven, where through 
 eternity perfect purification should keep her shame 
 undying, taught her unbelief, and turned her for 
 comfort to that other deep instinct of humanity, 
 which sees in death the promise of eternal sleep, 
 rest, and oblivion. In these days, she thought 
 much of poor George Bayley, and his talk in the 
 prayer-meeting the night before he killed himself. 
 By the mystic kinship that had declared itself 
 between their sorrowful destinies, she felt a sense 
 of nearness to him greater than her new love had 
 given or ever could give her toward Henry. , She 
 recalled how she had sat listening to George's 
 talk that evening, pitifully, indeed, but only half 
 comprehending what he meant, with no dim, 
 foreboding warning that she was fated to reproduce 
 his experience so closely. Yes, reproduce it, 
 perhaps, God only knew, even to the end. She 
 could not bear this always. She understood now, 
 ah ! how well, his longing for the river of Lethe 
 whose waters give forgetfulness. She often saw his 
 pale face in dreams, wearing the smile he wore as 
 he lay in the coffin, a smile as if he had been 
 washed in those waters he sighed for. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. '^J 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Henry had not referred to their marriage 
 after the first interview. From day to day, and 
 week to week, he had put off doing so, hoping 
 that she might grow into a more serene condition 
 of mind. But in this respect the result had sadly 
 failed to answer his expectation. He could 
 not deny to himself that, instead of becoming 
 more cheerful, she was relapsing into a more and 
 more settled melancholy. From day to day he 
 noted the change, like that of a gradual petrifica- 
 tion, which went on in her face. It was as if before 
 his eyes she were sinking into a fatal stupor, from 
 which all his efforts could not rouse her. 
 
 There were moments when he experienced the 
 chiUing premonition of a disappointment, the 
 possibility of which he still refused to actually 
 entertain. He owned to himself that it was a 
 harder task than he had thought to bring back to 
 life one whose veins the frost of despair has chilled 
 There were, perhaps, some things too hard even 
 for his love. It was doubly disheartening for him 
 thus to lose confidence ; not only on his own 
 account, but on hers. Not only had he to ask him- 
 self what would become of his life in the event of 
 failure, but vi^hat would become of hers ? One day, 
 
go DR. HEIDENIIOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 overcome by this sort of discouragement, feeling 
 tliat he was not equal to the case, that matters 
 were growing worse instead of better, and that he 
 needed help from some source, he asked Madeline 
 if he had not better write to her mother to come 
 to Boston, so that they two could keep house 
 together. 
 
 " No," she said, in a quick, startled voice, look- 
 ing up at him in a scared way. 
 
 He hastened to reassure her, and say that he 
 had not seriously thought of it, but he noticed 
 that during the rest of the evening she cast fur- 
 tive glances of apprehension at him, as if suspicious 
 that he had some plot against her. She had iled 
 from home because she could not bear her mother's 
 eyes. 
 
 Meanwhile he was becoming almost as preoccu- 
 pied and gloomy as she, and their dreary inter- 
 views grew more dreary than ever, for she was 
 now scarcely more silent than he. His constant 
 and increasing anxiety, in addition to the duties 
 of a responsible business position, began to tell 
 on his health. The owner of the manufactory of 
 which he was superintendent called him into his 
 office one day and told him he was working too 
 hard, and must take a little vacation. But he 
 declined. Soon after a physician whom he knew 
 buttonholed him on the street, and managed to 
 get in some shrewd questions about his health. 
 Henry owned he did not sleep much of nights. The 
 doctor said he must take a vacation, and, this 
 being declared impossible, forced a box of sleeping- 
 
t>R. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 9I 
 
 powders on him, and made him promise to try 
 them. 
 
 All this talk about his health, as well as his own 
 sensations, set him to thinking of the desperate 
 position in which Madeline would be left in the 
 event of his serious sickness or death. 
 
 That very day he made up his mind that it 
 would not do to postpone their marriage any 
 longer. It seemed almost brutal to urge it on 
 her in her present frame of mind, and yet it was 
 clearly out of the question to protract the present 
 situation. 
 
 The quarter of the city in which he resided was 
 suburban, and he went home every night by the 
 steam cars. As he sat in the car that evening 
 waiting for the train to start, two gentlemen in the 
 seat behind fell to conversing about a new book on 
 mental physiology, embodying the latest dis- 
 coveries. They kept up a brisk talk on this subject 
 till Henry left the car. He could not, however, 
 have repeated a single thing which they had said. 
 Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he had only 
 been dimly conscious what they were talking about. 
 His ears had taken in their words, but he had heard 
 as not hearing. 
 
 After tea, in the gloaming, he called, as usual, on 
 Madeline. After a few casual words, he said, gently : 
 
 "Madeline, you remember you promised to 
 marry me a few weeks ago. I have not hurried 
 you, but I want you now. There is no use in wait- 
 ing any longer, dear, and I want you." 
 
92 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 She was sitting, in a low chair, her hands folded 
 in her lap, and as he spoke her head sank so low 
 upon her breast that she could not see her face. 
 He was silent for some moments waiting a reply, 
 but she made none. 
 
 " I know it was only for my sake you promised,' 
 he said again. " I know it will be nothing to yon, 
 and yet I would not press you if I did not think 
 I could make you happier so. I will give up my 
 business for a time, and we will travel and see the 
 world a little." 
 
 Still she did not speak, but it was to some 
 extent a reassurance to him that she showed no 
 agitation. 
 
 "Are you willing that we should be married in a 
 few days ? " he asked. 
 
 She lifted her head slowly and looked at him 
 steadfastly. 
 
 " You are right," she said. " It is useless to 
 keep on this way any longer." 
 
 "You consent, then? " said he, quite encouraged 
 by her quiet air and apparent willingness. 
 
 " Don't press me for an answer to-night," she 
 replied, after a pause, during which she regarded 
 him with a singular fixity of expression. " Wait 
 till to-morrow. You shall have an answer to-mor- 
 row. You are quite right. I've been thinking, so 
 myself. It is no use to put it off any longer." 
 
 He spoke to her once or twice after this, but she 
 was gazing out through the window into the 
 darkening sky, and did not seem to hear hun. H 
 
Dr. heideNHoff's process. 93 
 
 rose to go, and had already reached the hall, when 
 she called him. 
 
 " Come back a moment, Henry." 
 
 He came back. 
 
 " I want you to kiss me," she said. 
 
 She was standing in the middle of the room. 
 Her tali figure in its black dress was flooded with 
 the weird radiance of the rising moon, nor was the 
 moonshine whiter than her cheek, nor sadder than 
 her steadfast eyes. Her lips were soft and yield- 
 ing, clinging, dewy wet. He had never thought 
 a kiss could be so sweet, and yet he could have 
 wept, he knew not why. 
 
 When he reached his lodgings, he was in an 
 extremely nervous condition. In spite of all that 
 was painful and depressing in the associations of 
 the event, the idea of having Madeline for his 
 wife in a few days more had power to fill him 
 with feverish excitement, an excitement all the 
 more agitating because it was so composite in its 
 elements, and had so little in common with the 
 exhilaration and light-heartedness of successful 
 lovers in general. He took one of the doctor's 
 sleeping-powders, tried to read a dry book on elec- 
 tricity, endeavoured to write a business letter, 
 smoked a cigar, and finally went to bed. 
 
 It seemed to him that he went all the next day 
 in a dazed, dreaming state, until the moment 
 when he presented himself, after tea, at Made- 
 line's lodgings, and she opened the door to him. 
 The surprise which he then experienced was cal- 
 
94 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 culated to arouse him, had he been indeed dream- 
 ing. His first thought was that she had gone 
 crazy, or else had been drinking wine to raise her 
 spirits ; for there was a flush of excitement on 
 either cheek, and her eyes were bright and un- 
 steady. In one hand she held, with a clasp that 
 crumpled the leaves, a small scientific magazine, 
 which he recognized as having been one of a bundle 
 of periodicals that he had ^ent her. With her 
 other hand, instead of taking the hand which he 
 extended, she clutched his arm and almost pulled 
 him inside the door. 
 
 " Henry, do you remember what George Bayley 
 said that night in meeting, about the river of 
 Lethe, in which souls were bathed and forgot the 
 past ? " 
 
 "I remember something about it," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 " There is such a river. It was not a fable. 
 It has been found again," she cried. 
 
 " Come and sit down, dear ; don't excite your- 
 self so much. We will talk quietly," he replied, 
 with a pitiful effort to speak soothingly, for he 
 made no question that her long brooding had 
 affected her mind. 
 
 '•Quietly! How do you suppose I can talk 
 quietly?" she exclaimed excitedly, in her nervous 
 irritation throwing off the hand which he had 
 laid on her arm. " Henry, see here, I want to 
 ask you something. Supposing anybody had 
 done something bad and had been veiy sorry for 
 
DR. h'eIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 95 
 
 it, and then had forgotten it all, forgotten it 
 wholly, would you think that made them good 
 again ? Would it seem so to you ? Tell me ? " 
 
 "Yes, surely; but it isn't necessary they should 
 forget, so long as they're sorry." 
 
 " But supposing they had forgotten, too ? " 
 
 " Yes, surely, it would be as if it had nevel 
 been." 
 
 " Henry," she said her voice dropping to a 
 low, hushed tone of wonder, while her eyes were 
 full of mingled awe and exultation, " what if I 
 were to forget it, forget that you know, forget it, 
 all, everything, just as if it had never been ? " 
 
 He stared at her with fascinated eyes. She was, 
 indeed, beside herself. Grief had made her mad. 
 The significance of his expression seemed to recall 
 her to herself, and she said : 
 
 " You don't understand. Of course not. You 
 think I'm crazy. Here, take it. Go somewhere 
 and read it. Don't stay here to do it. I couldn't 
 stand to look on. Go ! Hurry ! Read it, and 
 then come back." 
 
 She thrust the magazine into his hand, and 
 almost pushed him out of the door. But he went 
 no fartb-er than the hall. He could not think of 
 leaving her in that condition. Then it occurred 
 to him to look at the magazine. He opened if 
 by the light of the hall lamp, and his eyes fell on 
 these words, the title of an article : " The 
 Extirpation of Thought Processes. A New 
 Invention,."' 
 
96 DR. heidfa'iioff's process. 
 
 If she were crazy, here was at least the clue to 
 her condition. He read on ; his eyes leaped along 
 the lines. 
 
 The writer began with a clear account of the 
 discoveries of modern psychologists and physiolo- 
 gists as to the physical basis of the intellect, by 
 which it has been ascertained that certain ones of 
 the millions of nerve corpuscles or fibres in the 
 gre}' substance of the brain, record certain classes 
 of sensations and the ideas directly connected 
 with them, other classes of sensations with the 
 corresponding ideas being elsewhere recorded by 
 other groups of corpuscles. These corpuscles of 
 the grey matter, these mysterious and infiniteismal 
 hieroglyphics, constitute the memory, the record 
 of the hfe, so that when any particular fibre or 
 group of fibres is destroyed certain memories or 
 classes of memories are destroyed, without affecting 
 others which are elsewhere embodied in other fibres. 
 Of the many scientific and popular demonstra- 
 tions of these facts which were adduced, 
 reference was made to the generally known fact 
 that the effect of disease or injury at certain points 
 in the brain is to destroy definite classes of acquisi- 
 tions or recollections, leaving others untouched. 
 The article then went on to refer to the fact that 
 one of the known effects of the galvanic battery, 
 as medically' applied, is to destroy and dissolve 
 morbid tissues, while leaving healthy ones unim- 
 paired. Given then a patient, who, by excessive 
 indulgence of any particular train of thought, had 
 brought the group of fibres which were the physical 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 97 
 
 seat of such thoughts into a diseased condition, 
 Dr. Gustav Heidenhoff had invented a mode 
 of applying the galvanic battery so as to destroy 
 the diseased corpuscles, and thus annihilate the 
 class of morbid ideas involved beyond the pos- 
 sibility of recollection, and entirely without af- 
 fecting other parts of the brain or other classes 
 of ideas. The Doctor saw patients Tuesdays and 
 Saturdays at his office, 79 Street. 
 
 Madeline was not crazy, thought Henry, as 
 still standing under the hall lamp he closed the 
 article, but Dr. Heidenhoff certainly was. Never 
 had such a sad sense of the misery of her condi- 
 tion been borne in upon him, as when he reflected 
 that it had been able to make such a farrago of 
 nonsense seem actually credible to her. Overcome 
 with poignant sympathy, and in serious perplexity 
 how best ha could deal with her excited condition, 
 he slipped out of the house and walked for an hour 
 about the streets. Returning, he knocked again at the 
 door of her parlor. 
 
 " Have you read it ? " she asked, ''agerly as she 
 opened it. 
 
 "Yes, I've read it. I did not mean to send you 
 such trash. The man must be either an escaped 
 lunatic, or has tried his hand at a hoax. It is a 
 tissue of absurdity." 
 
 He spoke bluntly, almost harshly, because he was 
 in terror at the thought that she might be allowing 
 herself to be deluded by this wild and baseless fancy, 
 but he looked away as he spoke. He could not Hsar 
 to see the effect of his words, 
 G 
 
98 PR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 " It is not absurd," she cried, clasping his arm 
 convulsively with both hands so that she hurt him, 
 and looking fiercely at him out of hot, fevered eyes. 
 " It is the most reasonable thing in the world. It 
 must he true. There can be no mistake. God would 
 not let me be so deceived. He is not so cruel. 
 Don't tell me anything else." 
 
 She was in such an hysterical condition that he 
 saw he must be very gentle. 
 
 " But Madeline, you will admit that if he is not 
 the greatest of all discoverers, he must be a dangerous 
 quack. His process might kill you or make you 
 insane. It must be very perilous." 
 
 " If I knew there were a hundred chances that it 
 would kill me to one that it would succeed, do you 
 think I would hesitate ? " she cried. 
 
 The utmost concession that he could obtain her 
 her consent to was that he should first visit this Dr. 
 Heidenhoff alone, and make some inquiries of and 
 about him. 
 
bK. heibenhoff's process. tj^ 
 
 CHAPTliR X. 
 
 The next day he called at 79 Street. 
 
 There was a modest shingle bearing the name 
 "Dr. Gustav Heidenhoff" fastened up on the 
 side of the horse, which was in the middle of a 
 brick block. On announcing that he wanted to 
 see the Doctor, he was ushered into a waiting- 
 room, whose walls were hung with charts of the 
 brain and nervous system, and presently a tall, 
 scholarly looking man, with a clean-shaven face, 
 frosty hair, and very genial blue eyes, deep set be- 
 neath extremely bushy grey eyebrows, entered and 
 announced himself as Dr. Heidenhoff. Henry, 
 who could not help being very favorably impressed 
 by his appearance, opened the conversation by 
 saying that he wanted to make some inquiries 
 about the Thought-Extirpation process in behalf 
 of a friend who is thinking of trying it. The 
 Doctor, who spoke English with idiomatic accu- 
 racy, though with a slightly German accent, ex- 
 pressed his willingness to give him all possible in- 
 formation, and answered all his questions with 
 great apparent candour, illustrating his explana- 
 tions by references to the charts which covered 
 the walls of the office. He took him into an inner 
 office and showed his batteries, and explained that 
 
 ■a \ 
 
lOO DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS- 
 
 the pecnliarity of his process consisted, not in any 
 new general laws and facts of physiology which 
 he had discovered, but entirely in peculiarities in 
 his manner of applying his galvanic current, talk- 
 ing much about apodes, catodes, catelectrotonus 
 and anelectrotonus, resistance and rheostat, reac- 
 tions, fluctuations, and other terms of galvano- 
 therapeutics. The Doctor frankly admitted that 
 he was not in a way of making a great deal of 
 money or reputation by his discovery. It prom- 
 ised too much, and people consequently thought 
 it must be quackery, and as sufficient proof of 
 this he mentioned that he had now been five years 
 engaged in practicing the Thought-Extirpation 
 process without having attained any considerable 
 celebrity or attracting a great number of patients. 
 But he had a sufficient support in other branches 
 of medical practice, he added, and, so long as he 
 had patients enough for experimentation with 
 the aim of improving the process, he was quite 
 satisfied. 
 
 He listened with great interest to Henry's ac- 
 count of Madeline's case. The success of galvan- 
 ism in obliterating the obnoxious train of recol- 
 lections in her case would depend, he said, on 
 whether it had been indulged to an extent to 
 bring about a morbid state of the brain fibres con- 
 cerned. What might be conventionally or mor- 
 ally morbid or objectionable, was not, however, 
 necessarily disease in the material sense, and no- 
 thing but experiment could absolutely determine 
 whether the two conditions coincided in anv case 
 
DR. HEIDENl-IOFF S PROCESS. lot 
 
 At any rate, he positively assured Henry that no 
 harm could ensue to the patient, whether the 
 operation succeeded or not. 
 
 " It is a pity, young man," he said, with a 
 flash of enthusiasm, " that you don't come to me 
 twenty years later. Then I could guarantee your 
 friend the complete extirpation of any class of in- 
 convenient recollections she might desire removed, 
 whether they were morbid or healthy ; for since 
 the great fact of the physical basis of the intellect 
 has been established, I deem it only a question of 
 time when science shall have so accurately located 
 the various departments of thought and mastered 
 the laws of their processes, that, whether by gal- 
 vanism or some better process, the mental physician 
 will be able, to extract a specific recollection from 
 the memory as readily as a dentist pulls a tooth, 
 and as finally, so far as the prevention of any future 
 twinges in that quarter are concerned. Macbeth's 
 question, ' Canst thou not minister to a mind 
 diseased ; pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
 raze out the written troubles of the brain ? ' was a 
 puzzler to the sixteenth century doctor, but he of 
 the twentieth, yes, perhaps of the nineteenth, will 
 be able to answer it affirmatively." 
 
 " Is the process at all painful ? " 
 
 " In no degree, my dear sir. Patients have 
 described to me their sensations many times, and 
 their testimony is quite in agreement. When the 
 circuit is closed there is a bubbling, murmurous 
 sound in the ears, a warm sensation where the 
 wires touch the cranium, and a feeling as of a 
 
102 DR. HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 motion through the brain, entering at one poini 
 and going out at another. There are also sparks 
 of fire seen under the closed eyelids, an unpleassnt 
 taste in the mouth, and a sensation of smell ; that 
 is all." 
 
 " But the mental sensations ? " said Henry. 
 " I should think they must be very peculiar, the 
 sense of forgetting in spite of one's self, for I 
 suppose the patient's mind is fixed on the very 
 thoughts which the intent of the operation is to 
 extirpate." 
 
 "Peculiar? Oh no, not at all peculiar," rephed 
 the Doctor. " There are abundant analogies for 
 it in our daily experience. From the accounts of 
 patients I infer that it is not different from one's 
 sensations in falling asleep while thinking of 
 something. You know that we find ourselves for- 
 getting preceding links in the train of thought, and 
 in turning back to recall what went before, what 
 came after is meanwhile forgotten, the clue is 
 lost, and we yield to a pleasing bewilderment 
 which is presently itself forgotten in sleep. The 
 next morning we may or may not recall the matter. 
 The only differenee is that after the deep sleep 
 which always follows the application of my 
 process we never recall it, that is, if the operation 
 has been successful. It seems to involve no more 
 interference with the continuity of the normal 
 physical and mental functions than does an after- 
 noon's nap." 
 
 "But the after-effects!" persisted Henry 
 " Patients must surely feel that they have for- 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. I03 
 
 gotten something, even if they do not know what 
 it is. They must feel that there is something 
 gone out of their minds. I should think this 
 sensation would leave them in a painfully bewildered 
 state." 
 
 " There seems to be a feeling of slight confusion," 
 said the Doctor ; " but it is not painful, not more 
 pronounced, indeed, than that of persons who are 
 trying to bring back a dream which they remember 
 having had without being able to recall the first 
 thing about what it was. Of course, the patient 
 subsequently finds shreds and fragments of ideas, 
 as well as facts in his external relations, which, 
 having been connected with the extirpated subject, 
 are now unaccountable. About these the feeling 
 is, I suppose, like that of a man who, when he 
 gets over a fit of drunkenness or somnambulism, 
 finds himself unable to account for things which he 
 has unconsciously said or done. The immediate 
 effect of the operation, as I intimated before, 
 is to leave the patient very drowsy, and the first 
 desire is to sleep." 
 
 "Doctor," said Henry, "when you talk it all 
 seems for the moment quite reasonable, but you 
 will pardon me for saying that, as soon as you stop, 
 the whole thing appears such an incredible piece 
 of nonsense that I have to pinch myself to be sure I 
 am not dreaming." 
 
 The Doctor smiled. 
 
 " Well," said he, " I have been so long en- 
 gaged in the practical application of the process 
 
I04 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 that I confess I can't realize any element of the 
 strange or mysterious about it. To the eye of the 
 philosopher nothing is wonderful, or else you 
 may say all things are equally so. The commonest 
 and so-called simplest fact in the entire order of 
 nature is precisely as marvellous and incompre- 
 hensible at bottom as the most uncommon and 
 startling. You will pardon me if I say that it is 
 only to the unscientific that it seems otherwise. 
 But really, my dear sir, my process for the extir- 
 pation of thoughts was but the most obvious con- 
 sequence of the discovery that different classes of 
 sensations and ideas are localized in the brain, 
 and are permanently identified with particalar 
 groups of corpuscles of the grey matter. As soon 
 as that was known, the extirpating of special clusters 
 of thoughts became merely a question of mechanical 
 difficulties to be overcome, merely a nice problem 
 in surgery, and not more complex than many which 
 my brethern have solved in lithotomy and Hthotrity, 
 for instance." 
 
 " I suppose what makes the idea a little more 
 startling," said Henty, " is the odd intermingling 
 of moral and physical conceptions in the idea of 
 curing pangs of conscience by a surgical opera- 
 tion." 
 
 " I should think that intermingling ought not to 
 be very bewildering," rephed the Doctor, " since 
 it is the usual rule. Why is it more curious to cure 
 remorse by a physical act than to cause remorse by a 
 physical act ? And I believe such is the origin of 
 most remorse," 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S FROCESS. X05 
 
 "Yes," said Henry, still struggling to preserve 
 his mental equilibrium against this general over- 
 turning of his prejudices. " Yes, but the mind 
 consents to the act which causes the remorse, and 
 I suppose that is what gives it a moral quality." 
 
 " Assuredly," replied the Doctor ; " and I take 
 it for granted that patients don't generally come 
 to me unless they have experienced very genuine 
 and profound regret and sorrow for the act they 
 wish to forget. They have already repented it, 
 and according to every theory of moral accounta- 
 bility, I believe it is held that repentance 
 balances the moral accounts. My process, you see 
 then, only completes physically what is already done 
 morally. The ministers and moralists preach 
 forgiveness and absolution on repentance, but the 
 perennial fountain of the penitent's tears testifies 
 how empty and vain such assurances are. I fulfill 
 what they promise. They tell the penitent he 
 is forgiven. I free him from his sin. Remorse and 
 shame and wan regret have wielded their cruel 
 sceptres over human lives, from the beginning until 
 now. Seated within the mysterious labyrinths of 
 the brain, they have deemed their way secure, but 
 the lightning of science has reached them on their 
 thrones and set their bondmen free," and with an 
 impressive gesture the Doctor touched the battery 
 at his side. 
 
 Without giving further details of his con- 
 versation with this strange Master of Life, it is 
 sufficient to say that Henry finally agreed upon an 
 appointment for Madeline on the following day, 
 
Io6 DR. HEtDENHOir's PROCESS. 
 
 feeling something as if he were making an unholy 
 compact with the devil. He could not possibly 
 have said whether he really expected anything 
 from it or not. His mind had been in a state of 
 bewilderment and constant fluctuation during the 
 entire interview, at one moment carried away by 
 the contagious confidence of the Doctor's tone, and 
 impressed by his calm, clear, scientific explana- 
 tions and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, 
 and the next moment reacting into utter scepticism 
 and contemptuous impatience with himself for even 
 listening to such a preposterous piece of imposition. 
 By the time he had walked half a block, the sights 
 and sounds of the busy street, with their practical 
 and prosaic suggestions, had quite dissipated the 
 lingering influence of the necromantic atmosphere 
 of Dr. Heidenhoff' s office, and he was sure that he 
 had been a fool. 
 
 He went to see Madeline that evening, with 
 his mind made up to avoid telling her, if possible, 
 that he had made the appointment, and to make 
 such a report as should induce her to dismiss the 
 subject. But he found it was quite impossible to 
 maintain any such reticence toward one in her 
 excited and peremptory mood. He was forced to 
 admit the fact of the appointnsent. 
 
 " Why didn't you make it in the forenoon ? " she 
 demanded. 
 
 " What for ? It is only a difference of a few 
 hours," he replied. 
 
 " And don't you think a few hours is any- 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. I07 
 
 thing to me ? " she cried, bursting into hysterical 
 tears. 
 
 "You must not be so confident," he expostulated. 
 " It scares me to see you so when you are so likely 
 to be disappointed. Even the Doctor said that he 
 could not promise success. It would depend on 
 many things." 
 
 "What is the use of telling me that?" she 
 said, suddenly becoming very calm. "When I've 
 just one chance for life, do you think it is kind to 
 remind me that it may fail ? Let me alone to- 
 night." 
 
 The mental agitation of the past two days, 
 supervening on so long a period of profound depres- 
 sion, had thrown her into a state of agitation bor- 
 dering on hysteria. She was constantly changing 
 her attitude, rising and 'seating herself, and walk- 
 ing excitedly about. She would talk rapidly one 
 moment, and then relapse into a sudden chilled 
 silence in which she seemed to hear nothing. 
 Once or twice she laughed, a hard, unnatural laugh 
 of pure nervousness. 
 
 Presently she said : 
 
 " After I've forgotten all about myself, and 
 no longer remember any reason why I shouldn't 
 marry you, you will still remember what I've for- 
 gotten, and perhaps you won't want me." 
 
 " You know very well that I want you any- 
 way, and just the same whatever happens or 
 doesn't happen," he answered. 
 
 " I wonder whether it will be fair to let you 
 
io8 DR. heidexhoff's process. 
 
 marry me after I've forgotten," she coutmued 
 thoughtfully. " I don't know but I ought to 
 make you promise now that you won't ask me to 
 be your wife, for, of course, I shouldn't then know 
 any reason for refusing you." 
 
 " I wouldn't promise that." 
 
 " Oh, but you wouldn't do so mean a thing as 
 to take an unfair advantage of my ignorance." she 
 replied. " Anyway, I now release you from your 
 engagement to marry me, and leave you to do as 
 you choose to-morrow after I've forgotten. I 
 would make you promise not to let me marry 
 you then, if I did not feel that utter forgetfulness 
 of the past will leave me as pure and as good as if 
 — as if — I were like other women," and she burst 
 into tears, and cried bitterly for a while. 
 
 The completeness with which she had given 
 herself up to the belief that on the morrow her 
 memory was to be wiped clean of the sad past, al- 
 ternately terrified him and momentarily seduced 
 him to share the same fool's paradise of fancy. 
 And it is needless to say that the thought of 
 receiving his wife to his arms as fresh and virgin 
 in heart and memory as when her girlish beauty 
 first entranced him, was very sweet to his imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 " I suppose I'll have mother with me then," 
 she said, musingly. " How strange it will be ? I've 
 been thinking about it all day. I shall often find 
 her looking at me oddly, and ask her what she is 
 thinking of, and she will put me off. Why, Henry, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I09 
 
 I feel as dying persons do about having people look 
 at their faces after they are dead. I shouldn't like 
 to have any enemies who knew all about me, see me 
 after I've forgotten. You'll take care that the)' don't, 
 won't you, Henry ? " 
 
 " Why, dear, that is morbid. What is it to a 
 dead person, whose soul is in heaven, who looks at 
 his dead face ? It will be so with you after to- 
 morrow if the process succeeds." 
 
 She thought a while, and then said, shaking her 
 head : 
 
 " Well, anyhow, I'd rather none but my friends, 
 of those who used to know me, should see me. 
 You'll see to it, Henry. You may look at me all 
 you please, and think of what you please as you 
 look. I don't care to take away the memory of 
 anything from you. I don't believe a woman ever 
 trusted a man as I do you. I'm sure none ever 
 had reason to. I should be sorry if you didn't 
 •know all my faults. If there's a record to be kept 
 of them anywhere in the universe, I'd rather it 
 should be in your heart than anywhere else, unless, 
 maybe, God has a heart like yours," and she smiled 
 at him through those sweetest tears that ever well 
 up in human eyes, the tears of a limitless and perfect 
 trust. / 
 
 At one o'clock the next afternoon Madeline 
 was sitting on the sofa in Dr. Heidenhoff' s recep- 
 tion-room with compressed lips and pale cheeks, 
 while Henry was nervously striding to and fro 
 across the room, and fruitively watching her with 
 
i:o DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 anxious looks. Neither had had much to say that 
 morning. 
 
 " All ready," said the Doctor, putting his head in 
 at the door of his office and again disappearing. 
 Madeline instantly rose. Henry put his hand on 
 her arm, and said : 
 
 " Remember, dear, this was your idea, not mine, 
 and if the experiment fails that makes no difference 
 to me." 
 
 She bowed her head without replying, and they 
 went into the office. Madeline, trembling and 
 deadly pale, sat down in the operating chair, and 
 her head was immovably secured by padded clamps. 
 She closed her eyes and put her hand in Henry's. 
 
 " Now," said the Doctor to her, fix your at- 
 tention on the class of memories which you wish 
 destroyed ; the electric current more readily fol- 
 lows the fibres which are being excited by the 
 present passage of nervous force. Touch my arm 
 when you find your thoughts" somewhat concea- 
 trated." 
 
 In a few moments she pressed the Doctor's arm, 
 and instantly the murmurous, bubbling hum of the 
 battery began. She clasped Henry's hand a little 
 firmer, but made no other sign. The noise stopped. 
 The Doctor was removing the clamps. She opened 
 her eyes and closed them again drowsily. 
 
 " Oh, I'm so sleepy." 
 
 " You shall lie down and take a nap," said the 
 Doctor. 
 
 There was a little retiring room connected witi? 
 
bR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. Ili 
 
 the office where there was a sofa. No sooner had 
 she laid her head on the pillow than she fell asleep. 
 The Doctor and Henry remained in the operating 
 office, the door into the retiring room being just 
 ajar, so that they could hear her when she awoke. 
 
112 DR. HblDENHOFl- b PROCESS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 "How long will she sleep, Doctor?" asked 
 Henry, after satisfying himself by looking through 
 the crack of the door that she was actually asleep. 
 
 " Patients do not usually awake under an hour or 
 two," replied the Doctor. " She was very drowsy, 
 and that is a good sign. I think we may have the 
 best hopes of the result of the operation." 
 
 Henry walked restlessly to and fro. After Dr. 
 Heidenhoff had regarded him a few moments, he 
 said: 
 
 " You are nervous, sir. There is quite a time 
 to wait, and it is better to remain as calm as pos- 
 sible, for, in the event of an unsatisfactory result, 
 your friend will need soothing, and you will scarcely 
 be equal to that if you are yourself excited. I have 
 some very fair ci'gars here. Do me the honour to 
 try one, I prescribe it medicinally. Your nerves 
 need quieting " ; and he extended his cigar-case to 
 the young man. 
 
 As Henry with a nod of acknowledgment took a 
 cigar and lit it, and resumed his striding to and fro, 
 the Doctor, who had seated himself comfortably, 
 began to talk, apparently with the kindly intent of 
 diverting the other's mind. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. II3 
 
 " There are a number of applications of the 
 process I hope to make, which will be rather amus- 
 ing experiments. Take, for instance, the case of a 
 person who has committed a murder, come to me, 
 and forgotten all about it. Suppose he is subse- 
 quently arrested, and the fact ascertained that 
 while he undoubtedly committed the crime, he can 
 not possibly recall his guilt, and so far as his con- 
 science is concerned is as innocent as a new-born 
 babe, what then ? What do you think the authori- 
 ties would do ? " 
 
 " I think," said Henry, " that they would be very 
 much puzzled what to do." 
 
 " Exactly," said the Doctor; "I think so too. 
 Such a case would bring out clearly the utter con- 
 fusion and contradiction in which the current 
 theories of ethics and moral responsibility are 
 involved. It is time the world was waked up on 
 that subject. I should hugely enjoy precipitating 
 such a problem on the community. I'm hoping 
 every day a murderer will come in and require my 
 services. 
 
 " There is another sort of case which I should 
 also like to have," he continued, shifting his cigar 
 to the other side of his mouth, and uncrossing and 
 recrossing his knees. " Suppose a man has done 
 another a great wrong, and, being troubled by 
 remorse, comes to me and has the sponge of oblivion 
 passed over that item in his memory. Suppose 
 the man he has wronged, pursuing him with a 
 heart full of vengeance, gets him at last in his 
 H 
 
114 °^' heidenhoff's process, 
 
 power, but at the same time finds out that he has 
 forgotten, and can't be made to remember, the act 
 he desires to punish him for." 
 
 " It would be very vexatious," said Henry. 
 
 " Wouldn't it, though ? I can imagine the 
 pursuer, the avenger, if a really virulent fellow, 
 actually weeping tears of despite as he stands 
 before his victim and marks the utter unconscious- 
 ness of any offense with which his eyes meet his 
 own. Such a look would blunt the very stiletto 
 of a Corsican. What sweetness would there be in 
 vengeance if the avenger, as he plunged the dagger 
 in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his 
 ear ' Remember ! ' As well find satisfaction in 
 torturing an idiot or mutilating a corpse. I am 
 not talking now of brutish fellows, who would 
 kick a stock or stone which they stumbled over, 
 but of men intelligent enough to understand what 
 vengeance is." 
 
 " But don't you fancy the avenger, in the case 
 you supposed, would retain some bitterness toward 
 his enemy, even though he had fogotten the 
 
 offense ? " 
 
 " I fancy he would always feel a certain cold 
 dislike and aversion for him," replied the Doctor, 
 — " an aversion such as one has for an object or 
 an animal associated with some painful experience, 
 but any active animosity would be a moral impossi- 
 bility, if he were quite certain that there was 
 absolutely no guilty consciousness on the other's 
 part, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. II5 
 
 " But scarcely any application of the process 
 gives me so much pleasure to dream about as its 
 use to make forgiving possible, full, free, perfect, 
 joyous forgiving, in cases where otherwise, however 
 good our intentions, it is impossible, simply 
 because we can not forget. Because they can not 
 forget friends must part from friends who have 
 wronged them, even though they do from their 
 hearts wish them well. But they must leave them, 
 lor they can not bear to look in their eyes and be 
 reminded every time of some bitter thing. To all 
 such what good tidings will it be to learn of my 
 process ! 
 
 " Why, when the world gets to understand 
 about it, I expect that two men or two women, 
 or a man and a woman, will come in here, and say 
 to me : ' We have quarreled and outraged each 
 other, we have injured our friend, our wife, our 
 husband ; we regret, we would forgive, but we 
 can not, because we remember. Put between us 
 the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love 
 each other as of old, and so joyous will be the 
 tidings of forgiveness made easy and perfect, that 
 none will be willing to waste even an hour in 
 enmity. Raging foes in the heat of their first 
 wrath will bethink themselves ere they smite, and 
 come to me for more perfect satisfaction of their 
 feud than any vengeance could promise." 
 
 Henry suddenly stopped in his restless pacing, 
 stepped on tiptoe to the shghtly opened door of 
 the retiring room, and peered anxiously in. He 
 thought he heard a slight stir. But no; she was 
 
ii5 DR. iif.idenhoff's process. 
 
 still sleeping deepl}', her position quite unchanged. 
 He drew noiselessly back, and again almost closed 
 the door. 
 
 " I suppose," resumed the Doctor, after a pause, 
 " that I must prepare myself as soon as the pro- 
 cess gets well enough known to attract attention 
 to be roundly abused by the theologians and mor- 
 alists. I mean, of course, the thicker-headed 
 ones. They'll £ay I've got a machine for destroy- 
 ing conscience, and am sapping the foundations 
 of society. I believe that is the phrase. The 
 same class of people will maintain that its wrong 
 to cure the moral pain which results from a bad ~ 
 act who used to think it wrong to cure the physi- 
 cal diseases induced by vicious indulgence. But 
 the outcry won't last long, for nobody will be 
 long in seeing that the morality of the two kinds 
 of cures is precisely the same. If one is wrong, 
 the other is. If there is something holy and God- 
 ordained in the painful consequences of sin, it is 
 as wrong to meddle with those consequences when 
 they are physical as when they are mental. The 
 alleged reformatory effect of such suffering is as 
 great in one case as the other. But, bless you, 
 nobody nowadays holds that a doctor ought to 
 refuse to set a leg which its owner broke when 
 drunk or fighting, so that the man may 
 limp through life as a warning to himself and 
 others." 
 
 " I know some foggy-minded people hold in a 
 vague way that the working of moral retribution 
 is somehow more intelligent, just and equitable 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. II7 
 
 than the working of physical retribution. They 
 have a nebulous notion that the law of moral 
 retribution is in some peculiar way God's law, 
 while the law of physical retribution is the law of 
 what they call nature, somehow not quite so much 
 God's law as the other is. Such an absurdity 
 only requires to be stated to be exposed. The 
 law of moral retribution is precisely as blind, deaf, 
 and meaningless, and entitled to be respected just 
 as little, as the law of physical retribution. Why, 
 sir, of the two, the much-abused law of physical 
 retribution is decidedly more moral, in the sense 
 of obvious fairness, than the so-called law of 
 moral retribution itself. For, while the hardened 
 offender virtually escapes all pangs of conscience, 
 he can't escape the diseases and accidents which 
 attend vice and violence. The whole working of 
 moral retribution, on the contrary, is to torture 
 the sensitive souled, who would never do much 
 harm anyway, while the really hard cases of society, 
 by their very hardness, avoid all suffering. And 
 then, again, see how merciful and reformatory 
 is the working of physical retribution compared 
 with the pitilessness of the moral retribution of 
 memory. A man gets over his accident or disease 
 and is healthy again, having learned his lesson, 
 with the renewed health that alone makes it of 
 any value to have had that lesson. But shame 
 and sorrow for sin and disgrace go on for ever 
 increasing in intensity, in proportion as they 
 purify the soul. Their worm dieth not, and their 
 fire is not quenched. The deeper the repentance, 
 
Ii8 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 the more intense the longing and love for better 
 things, the more poignant the pang of regret and 
 the sense of irreparable loss. There is no 
 sense, no end, no use, in this law which in- 
 creases the severity of the punishment as the victim 
 grows in innocency. 
 
 " Ah, sir," exclaimed the Doctor, rising and 
 laying his hand caressingly on the battery, while a 
 triumphant exultation shone in his eyes, " you have 
 no idea of the glorious satisfaction I take in crush- 
 ing, destroying, annihilating these black devils of 
 evil memories that feed on hearts. It is a triumph 
 like a god's. 
 
 " But oh, the pity of it, the pity of it ! " he added, 
 sadly, as his hand fell by his side, " that this so 
 simple discovery has come so late in the world's 
 history ! Think of the infinite multitude of lives 
 it would have redeemed from the desperation of 
 hopelessness, or the life-long shadow of paralyzing 
 grief to all manner of sweet, good, and joyoususes ! " 
 
 Henry opened the door slightly, and looked into 
 the retiring room. Madeline was lying perfectly 
 motionless, as he had seen her before. She had 
 not apparently moved a muscle. With a sudden 
 fear at his heart, he softly entered, and on tiptoe 
 crossed the room and stood over her. The momen- 
 tary fear was baseless. Her bosom rose and fell 
 with long, full breathing, the faint flush of healthy 
 sleep tinged her cheek, and her lips were relaxed in 
 a smile. It was impossible not to feel, seeing her 
 slumbering so peacefully, that the marvellous change 
 had been indeed wrought, and the cruel demons o' 
 
DR. HEIDLNIIOFI-'S I'ROCESS. Iig 
 
 memory that had so long lurked behind the low, 
 white forehead were at last no more. 
 
 When he returned to the office, Dr. Heiden- 
 hoif had seated himself, and was contemplatively 
 smoking. 
 
 " She was sleeping, I presume," he said. 
 
 " Soundly," replied Henry. 
 
 " That is well. I have the best of hopes. She 
 is young. That is a favorable element in an opera- 
 tion of this sort." 
 
 Henry said nothing, and there was a consider- 
 able silence. Finally the Doctor observed, with the 
 air of a man who thinks it just as well to spend the 
 time talking : 
 
 "I am fond of speculating what sort of a world, 
 morally speaking, we should have if there were no 
 memory. One thing is clear, we should have no 
 such very wicked people as we have now. There 
 would, of course, be congenitally good and bad dis- 
 positions, but a bad disposition would not grow 
 worse and worse as it does now, and without this 
 progressive badness the depths of depravity are 
 never attained." 
 
 •• Why do you think that ? " 
 
 " Because it is the memory of our past sins 
 which demoralizes us, by imparting a sense ot 
 weakness and causing loss of self-respect. Take 
 the memory away, and a bad act would leave us no 
 worse in character than we were before its commis- 
 sion, and not a wit more likely to repeat it than we 
 were to commit it the first time." 
 
t20 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 " But surely our good or bad acts impress our own 
 characters for good or evil, and give an increased 
 tendency one way or the other." 
 
 " Excuse me, my dear sir. Acts merely ex- 
 press the character. The recollection of those 
 acts is what impresses the character, and gives it 
 a tendency in a particular direction. And that 
 is why I say, if memory were abolished, constitu- 
 tionally bad people would remain at their original 
 and normal degree of badness, instead of going 
 from bad to worse, as they always have hitherto 
 in the history of mankind. Memory is the 
 principle of moral degeneration. Remembered 
 sin is the most utterly diabolical influence in the 
 universe. It invariably either debauches or mar- 
 tyrizes men and women, accordingly as it renders 
 them desperate and hardened, or makes them a 
 prey to undying grief and self-contempt. When I 
 consider that more sin is the only anodyne for sin, 
 and that the only way to cure the ache of con- 
 science is to harden it, I marvel that even so many 
 as do, essay the bitter and hopeless way of repent- 
 ance and reform. In the main, the pangs ot 
 conscience, so much vaunted by some, do most cer- 
 tainly drive ten people deeper into sin where they 
 bring one back to virtue." 
 
 " But," remarked Henry, " suppose there were 
 no memory, and men did forget their acts, they 
 would remain just as responsible for them as 
 now." 
 
 " Precisely ; that is, not at all," replied the 
 Doctor. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 121 
 
 " You don't mean to say there is ho such 
 thing as responsibility, no such thing as justice. 
 Oh, I see, you deny free will. You are a necessi- 
 tarian." 
 
 The Doctor waved his hand rather contemptu- 
 ously. 
 
 " I know nothing about youf theological dis- 
 tinctions ; I am a doctor. I say that there is no 
 such thing as moral responsibility for past acts, no 
 such thing as real justice in punishing thenij for 
 the reason that human beings are not stationary 
 existences, but changing, growing, incessantly 
 progressive organisms, which in no two moments 
 are the same. Therefore justice, whose only pos- 
 sible mode of proceeding is to punish in present 
 time for what is done in past time, must always 
 punish a person more or less similar to, but never 
 identical with, the one who committed the offense, 
 and therein must be no justice. 
 
 " Why, sir, it is no theory of mine, but the 
 testimony of universal consciousness, if you inter- 
 rogate it aright, that the difference between the 
 past and present selves of the same individual is 
 so great as to make them different persons for all 
 moral purposes. That single fact we were just 
 speaking of — the fact that no man would care for 
 vengeance on one who had injured him, provided 
 he knew that all memory of the offense had been 
 blotted utterly from his enemy's mind — proves 
 the entire proposition. It shows that it is not 
 the present self of his enemy that the avenger is 
 angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the 
 
"122 DR. liEIbENttOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes 
 the distinction between the two. He only hates 
 the present man, and seeks vengeance on him in 
 so far as he thinks that he exults in remembering 
 the injury his past self did, or, if he does not 
 exult, that he insults and humiliates him by the 
 bare fact of remembering it. That is the con- 
 tinuing offense which alone keeps alive the aven- 
 ger's wrath against him. His fault is not that he 
 did the injury, for he did not do it, but that he 
 remembers it. 
 
 " It is the first principle of justice, isn't it, 
 that nobody ought to be punished for what he 
 can't help ? Can the man of to-day prevent or 
 affect what he did yesterday, let me say, rather, 
 what the man did out of whom he has grown — 
 has grown, I repeat, by a physical process which 
 he could not check save by suicide. As well 
 punish him for Adam's sin, for he might as easily 
 have prevented that, and is every whit as account- 
 able for it. You pity the child born, with- 
 out his choice, of depraved parents. Pity the 
 man himself, the man of to-day who, by a pro- 
 cess as inevitable as the child's birth, has grown 
 on the rotten stock of yesterday. Think you, 
 that it is not sometimes with a sense of loathing 
 and horror unutterable, that he feels his fresh life 
 thus inexorably knitting itself on, growing on, 
 to that old stem ? For, mind you well, the con- 
 sciousness of the man exists alone in the present 
 day and moment. There alone he lives. That 
 is himself. The former days are his dead, for 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I23 
 
 whose sins, in which he had no part, which per- 
 chance by his choice never would have been 
 done, he is held to answer for and to do penance. 
 And you thought, young man, that there was 
 such a thing as justice ! " 
 
 " I can see," said Henry after a pause. " that 
 when half a lifetime has intervened between a 
 crime and its punishment, and the man has 
 reformed, there is a certain lack of identity. I 
 have always thought punishments in such cases 
 very barbarous. I know that I should think it hard 
 to answer for what I may have done as a boy, 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 " Yes," said the Doctor. " flagrant cases of 
 that sort take the general eye, and people say 
 that they are instances of retribution rather than 
 justice. The unlikeness between the extremes of 
 life, as between the babe and the man, the lad 
 and the dotard, strikes every mind, and all admit 
 that there is not any apparent identity between 
 these widely parted points in the progress of a 
 human organism. How then ? How soon does 
 identity begin to decay, and when is it gone — in 
 one year, five years, ten years, twenty years, or 
 how many ? Shall we fix fifty years as the period 
 of a moral statute of limitation, after which punish- 
 ment shall be deemed barbarous ? No, no. 
 The gulf between the man of this instant and 
 the man of the last is just as impasssble as that 
 between the baby and the man. What is past is 
 eternally past. So far as the essence of justice is 
 concerned,. there is no difference between one of 
 
124 °^- HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 the cases of punishment which you called barbarous, 
 and one in which the penalty follows the offence 
 within the hour. There is no way of joining the 
 past with the present, and there is no difference 
 between what is a moment past and what is 
 eternally past." 
 
 " Then the assassin as he withdraws the stiletto 
 from his victim's breast is not the same man who 
 plunged it in." 
 
 "Obviously not," rephed the Doctor. "He 
 may be exulting in the deed, or, more hkely, he 
 may be in a reaction of regret. He may be worse, 
 he may be better. His being better or worse 
 makes it neither more nor less just to punish him, 
 though it may make it more or less expedient. 
 Justice demands identity ; similarity, however 
 close, will not answer. Though a mother could 
 not tell her twin sons apart, it would not make it 
 any more just to punish one for the other's sins." 
 
 " Then, you don't believe in the punishment of 
 crime ? " said Henry. 
 
 "Most emphatically I do," replied the Doctor; 
 " only I don't believe in calling it justice or ascribing 
 it a moral significance. The punishment of 
 criminals is a matter of public policy and expe- 
 diency, precisely like measures for the suppression 
 of nuisances or the prevention of epidemics. It 
 is needful to restrain those who by crime have 
 revealed their likelihood to commit further crimes, 
 and to furnish by their punishment a motive to 
 deter others from crime." 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I25 
 
 " And to deter the criminal himself after his 
 release," added Henry. 
 
 " I included him in the word ' others ' " said 
 the Doctor. " The man who is punished is other 
 from the man who did the act, and after punish- 
 ment he is still other." 
 
 " Really, Doctor," observed Henry, " I don't 
 see that a man who fully believes your theory is 
 in any need of your process for obliterating his 
 sins. He won't think of blaming himself for them 
 anyway." 
 
 " True," said the Doctor, " perfectly true. My 
 process is for those who cannot attain to my 
 philosophy. I break for the weak the chain of 
 memory which holds them to the past ; but stronger 
 souls are independent of me. They can unloose 
 the iron links and free themselves. Would that 
 more had the needful wisdom and strength thus 
 serenely to put their past behind them, leaving the 
 dead to bury their dead, and go blithely forward, 
 taking each new day as a life by itself, and reckon- 
 ing themselves daily new-born, even as verily 
 they are ! Physically, mentally, indeed, the present 
 must be for ever the outgrowth of the past, 
 conform to its conditions, bear its burdens ; but 
 moral responsibility for the past the present has 
 none, and by the very definition of the words can 
 have none. There is no need to tell people that 
 they ought to regret and grieve over the errors of 
 the past. They can't help doing that. I myself 
 suffer at times pretty sharply from twinges of the 
 rheumatism which I owe to youthful dissipation, 
 
C26 DR. heidenhoff's process. 
 
 It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old 
 fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the 
 wild student did, but, all the same, I confoundedly 
 wish he hadn't. 
 
 " Ah, me ! " continued the Doctor. " Is there 
 not sorrow and wrong enough in the present 
 world without having moralists teach us that it 
 is our duty to perpetuate all our past sins and 
 shames in the multiplying mirror of memory, as 
 if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the 
 sins of our past selves than of our father's sins. 
 How many a man and woman have poisoned their 
 lives with tears for some one sin far away in the 
 past ! Their folly is greater, because sadder, but 
 otherwise just like that of one who should devote 
 his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecile self- 
 complacency over the recollection of a good act 
 he had once done. The consequences of the good 
 and the bad deeds our fathers and we have done 
 fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now 
 scorching, of rewards and of penalties , alike unde- 
 served by our present selves. But, while we bear 
 them with such equanimity as we may, let us 
 remember that as it is only fools who flatter them- 
 selves on their past virtues, so it is only a sadder 
 sort of fools who plague themselves for their past 
 faults." 
 
 Henry's quick ear caught a rustle in the retir- 
 ing room. He stepped to the door and looked in. 
 Madeline was sitting up. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFf'S PROCESS. I27 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on 
 the floor, her left hand rested on the sofa by her 
 side, her right was raised to one temple and checked 
 in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of 
 hair which had been disarranged in sleep. Her 
 eyebrows were slightly contracted, and she was 
 staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her 
 faculties appear to be in the effort of reflection 
 that she did not notice Henry's entrance until, 
 standing by her side, he asked, in a voice which he 
 vainly tried to steady : 
 
 " How do you feel ? " 
 
 She did not look up at him at all, but replied, 
 in the dreamy, drawling tone of one in a brown 
 study : 
 
 " I — feel — well. I'm — ever — so — rested," 
 
 "Did you just wake up?" he said, after a 
 moment. He did not know what to say. 
 
 She now glanced up at him, but with an 
 expression of only partial attention, as if still 
 retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts. 
 
 " I've been awake some time trying to think it 
 out," she said. 
 
 "Think out what?" he asked, with a feeble 
 
128 DE, HEIDENHOFF's PROCESS. 
 
 affectation of ignorance. He was entirely at loss 
 what course to take with her. 
 
 " \'\'hy, what it was that we came here to have 
 me forget," she said, sharply. "You needn't think 
 the Doctor made quite a fool of me. It was some- 
 thing like hewing, harring, Howard. It was 
 something that began with ' H,' I'm quite sure. 
 ' H,' " she continued, thoughtfully, pressing her 
 hand on the braid she was yet in the act of push- 
 ing back from her forehead. " ' H,' — or may be 
 — ' K.' Tell me Henry. You must know of 
 course." 
 
 "Why — why," he stammered in consternation. 
 " If you came here to forget it, what's the use 
 of telhng you, now you're forgotten it, that is 
 — I mean, supposing there was anything to 
 forget." 
 
 "I haven't forgotten it," she declared. "The 
 process has been a failure anyhow. It's just 
 puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell 
 me. Why, I've almost got it now. I shall 
 remember it in a minute," and she looked up at 
 him as if she were on the point of being vexed 
 with his obstinacy. 
 
 The Doctor coming into the room at this 
 moment, Henry turned to him in his perplexity, and 
 said : 
 
 " Doctor, she wants to know what it was you 
 tried to make her forget." 
 
 " What would you say if I told you it was an old 
 love affair? " replied the Doctor, coolly, 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 129 
 
 " I should say that you were rather impertinent," 
 answered MadeHne, looking at him somewhat 
 haughtily. 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my 
 dear. You do well to resent it, but I trust you 
 will not be vexed with an old gentleman," replied 
 the Doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy 
 eyebrows with an expression of gloating benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 " I suppose. Doctor, you were only trying to 
 plague me so as to confuse me," she said, smiling. 
 "But you can't do it. I shall remember presently. 
 It began with ' H ' — I am almost sure of that. 
 Let's see — Harrington, Harvard. That's like it." 
 
 " Harrison Cordis, perhaps," suggested the 
 Doctor, gravely. 
 
 " Harrison Cordis ? Harrison ? Harrison ? " 
 she repeated, contracting her eyebrows thought- 
 fully ; " no, it was more like Harvard. I don't 
 want any more of your suggestions. You'd like to 
 get me off the track." 
 
 The Doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry 
 said to her, his heart swelling with an exultation 
 which made his voice husky, " Come, dear, we 
 had better go now ; the train leaves at four." 
 
 " I'll remember yet," she said, smiling at him 
 with a saucy toss of the head. He put out his arms 
 and she came into them, and their lips met in a kiss, 
 happy and loving on her part, and fraught with no 
 special feeling, but the lips which hers touched were 
 tremulous. Slightly surprised at his agitation, she 
 
130 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 leaned back in his clasp, and, resting her glorious 
 black eyes on his, said, 
 
 " How you love me, dear ! " 
 
 Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes ! the light 
 he had not seen since she was a girl, and which had 
 never shone for him before. As they were about to 
 leave, the Doctor drew him aside. 
 
 " The most successful operation I ever made, 
 sir," he said, enthusiastically. " I saw you were 
 startled that I should tell her so frankly what she 
 had forgotten. You need not have been so. That 
 memory is absolutely gone, and cannot be restored. 
 She might conclude that what she had forgotten 
 was anything else in the world except what it 
 really was. You may always allude with perfect 
 safety before her to the real facts, the only risk 
 being that, if she doesn't think you are making a 
 bad joke, she will be afraid that you are losing your 
 mmd." 
 
 All the way home Madeline was full of guesses 
 and speculation as to what it had been which she 
 had forgotten, finally, however, settling down to 
 the conclusion that it had something to do with 
 Harvard College, and when Henry refused to deny 
 explicitly that such was the case she was quite 
 sure. She announced that she was going to get a 
 lot of old catalogues and read over the names, and 
 also visit the college to see if she could not revive 
 the recollection. But, upon his solemnly urging 
 her not to do so, lest she might find her associa- 
 tions with that institution not altogether agree- 
 able if revived, she consented to give up the plan. 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. I3I 
 
 " Although, do you know," she said, " there is 
 nothing in the world which I should like to find 
 out so much as what it was we went to Dr. Hei- 
 denhoff in order to make me forget. What do 
 you look so sober for ? Wouldn't I really be glad 
 if I could ? " 
 
 " It's really nothing of any consequence," he said, 
 pretending to be momentarily absorbed in opening 
 his penknife. 
 
 " Supposing it isn't, it's just as vexatious not to 
 remember it," she declared. 
 
 " How did you like Dr. Heidenhoff ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I presume he's a good enough doctor, 
 but I thought that joke about an affair of the heart 
 wasn't at all nice. Men are so coarse." 
 
 " Oh, he meant no harm," said Henry, 
 hastily. 
 
 " I suppose he just tried to say the absurdest 
 thing he could think of to put me off the track 
 and make me laugh. I'm sure I felt more like 
 boxing his ears. I saw you didn't like it either, 
 sir." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 "Oh, you needn't think I didn't notice the 
 start you gave when he spoke, and the angry way 
 you looked at him. You may pretend all you 
 want to, but you can't cheat me. You'd be the 
 very one to make an absurd fuss if you thought I 
 had even so much as looked at anybody else." 
 And then she burst out laughing at the red and 
 pale confusion of his face. " Why, you're the 
 
132 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 picture of jealousy at the very mention of the 
 thing. Dear me, what a tyrant you are going to 
 be ! I was going to confess a lot of my old flirta- 
 tions to you, but now I sha'n't dare to. Oh, Henry, 
 how funny my face feels when I laugh, so stiff, 
 as if the muscles were all rusty ! I should think 
 I hadn't laughed for a year by the feeling." 
 
 He scarcely dared leave her when they reached 
 her lodgings, for fear that she might get to think- 
 ing and puzzling over the matter, and possibly, 
 at length might hit upon a clue which, followed 
 up, would lead her back to the grave so recently 
 covered over in her life, and turn her raving mad 
 with the horror of the discovery. As soon as he 
 possibly could, he almost ran back to her lodgings 
 in a panic. She had evidently been thinking 
 matters over. 
 
 " How came we here in Boston together, 
 Henry ? I don't seem to quite understand why I 
 came. I remember you came after me ? " 
 
 " Yes, I came after you." 
 " What was the matter ? Was I sick ? " 
 "Very sick." 
 '•Out of my head?" 
 "Yes." 
 
 " That's the reason you took me to the doctor, I 
 suppose ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But why isn't mother here with me ? " 
 " You — you didn't seem to want her," answered 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I33 
 
 Henry, a cold sweat covering his face under this 
 terrible inqnisition. 
 
 " Yes," said she, slowly. " I do remember your 
 proposing she should come and my not wanting 
 her. I can't imagine why. I must have been out 
 of my head, as you say. Henry," she continued, 
 regarding him with eyes of sudden soft- 
 ness, " you must have been very good to me. 
 Dr. Heidenhoff could never make me forget 
 that." 
 
 The next day her mother came. Henry met 
 her at the station and explained everything to her, 
 so that she met Madeline, already prepared for the 
 transformation, that is, as much prepared as the 
 poor worsan could be. The idea was evidently 
 more than she could take in. In the days that 
 followed she went about with a dazed expression 
 on her face, and said very little. When she looked 
 at Henry it was with a piteous mingling of gratitude 
 and appeal. She appeared to regard Madeline 
 with a bewilderment that increased rather than 
 decreased from day to day. Instead of becoming 
 familiar with the transformation, the wonder 
 of it evidently grew on her. The girl's old, 
 buoyant spirits, which had returned in full flow, 
 seemed to shock and pain her mother, with a 
 sense of incongruity she could not get over. 
 When Madeline treated her lover to an exhibition 
 of her old imperious tyrannical ways, which to 
 see again was to him sweeter than the return ot 
 day, her mother appeared frightened, and would 
 try feebly to check her, and address little depre- 
 
134 DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. 
 
 eating remarks to Henry that were very sad to 
 hear. One evening, vyhen he came in in the 
 twilight, he saw Madeline sitting with " her baby," 
 as she had again taken to calling her mother, in her 
 arms, rocking and soothing her, while the old 
 lady was crying and sobbing on her daughter's 
 bosom. 
 
 " She mopes, poor little mother ! " said Madeline 
 to Henry. " I can't think what's the matter with 
 her. We'll take her off with us on our wedding 
 trip. She needs a little change." 
 
 " Dear me, no, that will never do," protested the 
 httle woman, with her usual half-frightened look 
 at Henry. "Mr. Burr wouldn't think that nice 
 at all." * 
 
 " I mean that Mr. Burr shall be too much occu- 
 pied in thinking how nice I am than to do any 
 other thinking," said Madeline. 
 
 " That's like the dress you wore to the picnic at 
 Hemlock Hollow," said Henry. 
 
 "Why, no, it isn't either. It only looks a 
 little like it. It's light, and cut the same way 
 that's all the resemblance ; but of course a man 
 couldn't be expected to know any better." 
 
 " It's exactly like it," maintained Henry, 
 
 " What you'll bet ? " 
 
 "I'll bet the prettiest pair of bracelets I can find 
 in the city." 
 
 " Betting is wicked," said Madeline, " and so I 
 suppose it's my duty to take this bet just to dis- 
 courage you from betting any more. Being engaged 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I35 
 
 makes a girl responsible for a young man's moral 
 culture." 
 
 She left the room, and returned in a few moments 
 with the veritable picnic dress on. 
 
 " There ! " she said as she stepped before the 
 mirror. 
 
 "Ah, that's it, that's it! I give in," he exclaimed, 
 regarding her ecstatically, " How pretty you were 
 that day ! I'd never seen you so pretty before. Do 
 you remember that was the day I kissed you first ? 
 I should never have dared to. I just had to — I 
 couldn't help it." 
 
 "So I believe you said at the time," observed 
 Madeline, dryly. " It does make me not so bad," 
 she admitted, inspecting herself with a critical 
 air. " I really don't believe you could help it. 
 I ought not to have been so hard on you, poor boy. 
 There ! there ! I didn't mean that. Don't ! 
 Here comes mother." 
 
 Mrs. Brand entered the room, bringing a huge 
 pasteboard box. 
 
 " Oh, she's got my wedding dress ! Haven't you, 
 mother ? " exclaimed Madeline, pouncing on the 
 box. " Henry, you might as well go right home. I 
 can't pay any more attention to you to-night. 
 There's more important business." 
 
 "But I want to see you with it on," he 
 demurred. 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Very much ? " 
 
136 DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS. 
 
 " The worst kind." 
 
 " Well, then, you sit down and wait here by 
 yourself for about an hour, and maybe you shall ; " 
 and the women were off up stsirs. 
 
 At length there was a rustling on the stairway, 
 and she re-entered the room, all sheeny white in 
 lustrou^satin. Behind the gauzy veil that fell 
 from the coronal 'of dark-brown hair adown the 
 shoulders, her face shone with a look he had never 
 seen in it. It was no longer the mirthful, self- 
 rehant girl who stood before him, but the shrink- 
 ing, trustful bride. The flashing, imperious 
 expression that so well became her bold beauty at 
 other times had given place to a shy and blushing 
 softness, inexpressibly charming to her lover. 
 In her shining eyes a host of virginal alarms 
 were mingled with the tender, solemn trust of 
 love. 
 
 As he gazed, his eyes began to swim with tender- 
 ness, and her face grew dim and misty to his 
 vision. Then her white dress lost- its sheen 'and 
 form, and he found himself staring at the white 
 window-shade of his bedroom, through which the 
 morning light was peering. Startle'd, bewildered, 
 he raised himself on his elbow in bed. Yes, he 
 was in bed. He looked around, mechanically 
 taking note of one and another familiar feature 
 of the apartment to make sure of his condition. 
 There, on the stand by his bedside, lay his open 
 watch, still ticking, and indicating his customary 
 hour of rising. There, turned on its face, lay 
 that dry book on electricity he had been reading 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I37 
 
 himself to sleep with. And there on the bureau, 
 was the white paper that had contained the mor- 
 phine sleeping-powder which he took before going 
 to bed. That was what had made him dream. 
 For some of it must have been a dream ! But 
 how much of it was a dream ? He must think. 
 That was a dream certainly about her wedding 
 dress. Yes, and, perhaps — yes, surely — that must 
 be a dream about her mother's being in Boston. 
 He could not remember writing Mrs. Brand 
 since Madeline had been to Dr. Heidenhoff. He 
 put his hand to his forehead, then raised his head 
 and looked around the room with an appealing 
 stare. Great God ! why, that was a dream too ! 
 The last waves of sleep ebbed from his brain, and 
 to his aroused consciousness the clearj hard hues 
 of reahty dissevered themselves sharply from the 
 vague contours of dreamland. Yes, it was all a 
 dream. He remembered how it all was now. He 
 had not seen Madeline since the evening before 
 when he had proposed their speedy marriage, and 
 she had called him back in that strange way to 
 kiss her. What a dream ! That sleeping-powder 
 had done it — that, and the book on electricity, 
 and that talk on mental physiology which he had 
 overheard in the car the afternoon before. These 
 rude materials, as unpromising as the shapeless 
 bits of glass which the kaleidoscope turns into 
 schemes of symmetrical beauty, were the stuff his 
 dream was made of. 
 
 It was a strange dream, indeed, such an one as 
 a man has once or twice in a lifetime. As he 
 
138 DR. HEIDENHOFf'S PROCESS. 
 
 tried to recall it, already it was fading from his 
 remembrance. That kiss Madeline had called him 
 back to give him the night before ; that had been 
 strange enough to have been a part also of the 
 dream. What sweetness, what sadness were in 
 the touch of her lips. Ah ! when she was once 
 his wife, he could contend at better advantage 
 with her depression of spirits. He would hasten 
 their marriage. If possible it should take place that 
 very week. 
 
 There was a knock at the door. The house boy 
 entered, gave him a note, and went out. It was in 
 Madeline's hand, and dated the preceding evening. 
 It read as follows : 
 
 "You have but just gone away. I was afraid 
 when I kissed you that you would guess what I 
 was going to do, and make a scene about ir, and 
 oh, dear I I am so tired that I couldn't bear a 
 scene. But you didn't think. You took the kiss 
 for a promise of what I was to be to you, when 
 it only meant what I might have been. Poor, 
 dear boy 1 It was just a little stupid of you not to 
 guess. Did you suppose I would really marry 
 you ? Did you really think I would let you pick 
 up from the gutter a soiled rose to put in your 
 bosom when all the fields are full of fresh daisies ? 
 Oh, I love you too well for that! Yes, dear, I love 
 you. I've kept the secret pretty well, haven't I ? 
 You see, loving you has made me more careful of 
 your honor than when in my first recklessness I said 
 I would marry you in spite of all. But don't think, 
 dear, because I love you that it is a sacrifice I 
 
DR. HEIDENHOFF S PROCESS. I39 
 
 make in not being your wife, I do truly love you, 
 but I could not be happy with you, for my hap- 
 piness would be shame to the end. It would be 
 always with us as in the dismal weeks that now 
 are over. The way I love you is not the way I 
 loved him, but it is a better way. I thought per- 
 haps you would like to know that you alone have 
 any right to kiss my lips in dreams. I speak 
 plainly of things we never spoke of, for you know 
 people talk freely when night hides their faces 
 from each other, and how much more if they 
 know that no morning shall ever come to make 
 them shamefaced again ! A certain cold white 
 hand will have wiped away the flush of shame for 
 ever from my face when you look on it again, for 
 I go this night to that elder and greater redeemer, 
 whose name is death. Don't blame me, dear, and 
 say I was not called away. Is it only when death 
 touches our bodies that we are called ? Oh, I am 
 called, I am called, indeed ! 
 
 " Madeline." 
 
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