"All over. I'm so used to being alone that I shouldn't know what to do
with a wife." He puffed seriously.

Ah! the futility of our desires, of our castles, of our dreams! The
complacency with which we jog along in what we deem to be our own
particular groove! I recall a girl friend of my youth who was going to
be a celibate, a great reformer, and toward that end was studying for
the pulpit. She is now the mother of several children, the most
peaceful and unorative woman I know. You see, humanity goes whirring
over various side-tracks, thinking them to be the main line, till fate
puts its peculiar but happy hand to the switch. Scharfenstein had been
plugging away over rusty rails and grass-grown ties--till he came to
Barscheit.

"Hope is the wings of the heart," said I, when I thought the pause had
grown long enough. "You still hope?"

"In a way. If I recollect, you had an affair once,"--shrewdly.

I smoked on. I wasn't quite ready to speak.

"You were always on the hunt for ideals, too, as I remember; hope
you'll find her."

"Max, my boy, I am solemnly convinced that I have."

"Good Lord, you don't mean to tell me that you are _hooked_?" he cried.

"I see no reason why you should use that particular tone," I answered