help you to have confidence.
But I cannot exert your will for you; you must do that. To begin with, I
shall give you a very simple task. I think I can understand a little
your present attitude toward me. You are in doubt. I wish you to be in
doubt, for the moment. I wish your curiosity and desires for and against
to be so evenly balanced that you will have no difficulty in choosing
for or against. You are just in that condition. You have feared and
mistrusted me; now your fear and suspicion are leaving you, and
curiosity is balancing against indolence. I do not bid you to make an
effort to will; I leave it entirely to you to determine now whether you
will struggle against weakness or submit to it; whether you will begin
to use your sleeping will-power or else continue to accept what comes."

I rose to my feet at once.

"What is your decision?" asked the Doctor smiling--the first smile I had
ever seen on his face.

"I will be a man!" I exclaimed.

* * * * *

I became a frequent visitor at the Doctor's, and gradually learned more
and more of this remarkable man. His little daughter told me much, that
I could never have guessed. She was a very serious child, perhaps of
eleven years, and not very attractive. In fact, she was ugly, but her
gravity seemed somehow to suit her so well that I could by no means
dislike her. Her father was very fond of her; of an evening the three
of us would sit in the west room; the Doctor would smoke and read; I
would read some special matter--usually on philosophy--selected by my
tutor; Lydia would sit silently by, engaged in sewing or knitting, and
absorbed seemingly in her own imaginings. Lydia at one time said some
words which I could not exactly catch, and which made me doubt the
seeming poverty of her father, but I attributed her speech to the
natural pride of a child who thinks its father great in every way. I was
not greatly interested, moreover, in the domestic affairs of the
household, and never thought of asking for information that seemed
withheld. I learned from the child's talk, at odd times when the Doctor
would be absent from the room, that they were foreigners,--a fact which.
I had already taken for granted,--but I was never made to know the land
of their birth. It was certain that Dr. Khayme could speak German and
French, and I could frequently see him reading in books printed in
characters unknown to me. Several times I have happened to co