face; add to these a sharp reddish nose, pale lips, a spare, badly grown mustache and beard of a dirty color, and slight baldness.  His demeanor was suave and very submissive, his voice had the faltering persuasiveness which a natural and reasonable man dislikes, because it warns him that the speaker is lying in wait to take him by surprise.  Barinskoi, beside, never stood upright when he was speaking to any one.  He bent his back, his head hung forward, his eyes shifted their glance from the points of his own boots to other people’s, his face was crumpled up into a smiling mask, and working his hands about nervously he crammed so many polite phrases and compliments into his conversation that he was a terrible bore to all his acquaintances.  Barinskoi, who was an accomplished spy, intended by his entrance into the laboratory to learn all he could in a circuitous way of persons and conditions.

After a short observation he noticed that Wilhelm seemed isolated in the midst of the others, and was treated coldly by every one except the professor.  He learned that this coolness of the atmosphere was on account of the refusal of the duel.  After that he tried every possible means to get nearer to him.  Wilhelm was working in some important researches, and it was possible that the results would destroy some existing theories.

The professor followed the experiments with great attention, and many times spoke of him as his best pupil in difficult work.  That was Barinskoi’s excuse for asking Wilhelm if he would initiate him into his work, and explain to him his hypotheses and methods.  He added, with his submissive smile and nervous rubbing of the hands, that the Heir Doctor might be quite easy about the priority of his discoveries, as he was quite prepared to write an explanation that he stood in the position of pupil to the Heir Doctor, and had only a share in his discoveries in common with others.  Wilhelm contented himself by replying that priority was nothing to him, and that he did not work for fame, but because he was ignorant and sought for knowledge.

Thereupon Barinskoi said he was very happy to have found some one with the same views as himself, he also thought that fame was nonsense, that knowledge was the only essential thing, that it gave power over things and men, that the ideal was to proceed unknown and unnoticed through life, making the others dance without knowing who played on the instrument.  That was not what Wilhelm meant, but he let it go without denying it.  Barinskoi also tried to claim him for a fellow-countryman, but Wilhelm stopped him, explaining that he was a German, although born beyond the frontier of his fatherland.  This slight did not disconcert Barinskoi; he endeavored to produce an impression on Wilhelm, and if one shut one’s eyes to his ugliness and fawning ways he was a well-informed man; harshness was not in Wilhelm’s nature, so he held out no longer against Barinskoi’s importunity—­who very soon accompanied him