have a comrade like her for life," he thought. "I
should like her to be the mother of Angele's children."

XXXI

Frederick grew better daily. It seemed to him as if he had been ill for
more than a decade. His body was not undergoing a process of evolution
but of rebuilding from fresh young cells. The same thing seemed to be
happening to his soul. The burden that had been weighing upon his
spirits, the restless thoughts that had constantly been circling about
the various shipwrecks in his life had departed. He had thrown off his
past as one discards a cloak which the wind and weather, thorns and sword
thrusts have torn and worn. Memories, which before his illness had forced
themselves upon him unbidden in the awful guise of actual presence, no
longer recurred to him. To his astonishment and satisfaction he observed
that they had sunk forever on the other side of a remote horizon. The
itinerary of his life had brought him to a province wholly new and novel.
He had passed through a fearful process of fire and water and had come
out cleansed, purified and young. Convalescents always grope their way
into their newly granted lives, like children without a past.

The American spring had come early. Suddenly the weather turned hot. In
that part of America the transition from winter to summer is very abrupt.
In the pools and lakes, the bullfrogs croaked in rivalry with the high,
clear shrilling of the other American frogs. Now came that unendurable
combination of heat and humidity which Mrs. Schmidt so dreaded. She
suffered fearfully during the summer, when she continued with her hard
work just as in winter.

Frederick began again to accompany Peter Schmidt on his professional
rounds, and sometimes the friends took long excursions into the country.
They fell back into their old habit of revolving problems and pondering
the destinies of mankind. To his friend's astonishment, Frederick did not
display his old incisiveness in debate, whether in attack or defence.
There was a cheerful placidity about him which took the keenness from any
hope or fear of a universal character upon which they touched in their
discussions.

"How do you account for it?" asked Peter Schmidt.

"I think I have well earned the precious right merely to breathe, and
I think I appreciate it. What I want to do for the time being is smell,
taste, and enjoy. An Icarus flight does not suit my present condition,
and with my newly awakened tender love