He began to lose the radiant expression from his round and rosy
face. He had less appetite, and his moods of depression became
so frequent that he could not hide then even from Henriette. She
asked him once or twice if there were not something the matter
with him, and he laughed--a forced and hurried laugh--and told
her that he had sat up too late the night before, worrying over
the matter of his examinations. Oh, what a cruel thing it was
that a man who stood in the very gateway of such a garden of
delight should be tormented and made miserable by this loathsome
idea!

The disturbing symptom still continued, and so at last George
purchased a medical book, dealing with the subject of the
disease. Then, indeed, he opened up a chamber of horrors; he
made up his mind an abiding place of ghastly images. In the book
there were pictures of things so awful that he turned white, and
trembled like a leaf, and had to close the volume and hide it in
the bottom of his trunk. But he could not banish the pictures
from his mind. Worst of all, he could not forget the description
of the first symptom of the disease, which seemed to correspond
exactly with his own. So at last he made up his mind he must
ascertain definitely the truth about his condition.

He began to think over plans for seeing a doctor. He had heard
somewhere a story about a young fellow who had fallen into the
hands of a quack, and been ruined forever. So he decided that he
would consult only the best authority.

He got the names of the best-known works on the subject from a
bookstore, and found that the author of one of these books was