All the same, on you must go .-- What must the result be ?" "I must stumble, you think, and fall ?" The physician's reproof had hit Paula all the harder because she could not conceal from herself that there was much truth in it.

She had come hither on purpose to find encouragement, and these accusations troubled even her sense of high health.

Why should she submit to be taken to task like a school-girl by this man, himself still young?
If this went on she would let him hear....

But he was speaking again, and his reply calmed her, and strengthened her conviction that he was a true and well-meaning friend.
"Not that perhaps," he said, "because--well, because nature has blessed you with perfect balance, and you go forward in full self-possession as becomes the daughter of a hero.

We must not forget that it is of your soul that I am speaking; and that maintains its innate dignity of feeling among so much that is petty and mean." "Then why need I fear to look back when it gives me so much comfort ?" she eagerly enquired, as she gazed in his face with fresh spirit.
"Because it may easily lead you to tread on other people's feet! That hurts them; then they are annoyed, and they get accustomed to think grudgingly of you--you who are more lovable than they are." "But quite unjustly; for I am not conscious of ever having intentionally grieved or hurt any one in my whole life." "I know that; but you have done so unintentionally a thousand times." "Then it would be better I should quit them altogether." "No, and a thousand times no! The man who avoids his kind and lives in solitude fancies he is doing some great thing and raising himself above the level of the existence he despises.