He soon stopped, however. Thoughts crowded into his head; he leaned back in the chair and gave them free course. Another man would have dreamed. Yosef collected and summed up his own past; he thought over the conditions in which he was then, he cast up the future. Regarding this future, it was difficult for him to remain in the rôle of a cool reasoner. The words "That is the young doctor, papa," came to his memory involuntarily. To be a doctor and to some extent a high-priest of science; to rule on one side by reason, on the other by significance, property, reputation,--Yosef had not become indifferent yet to reputation,--to attract glances, rouse laughter, win hearts--Here he remembered Helena. In the region of feeling he was not free now to choose. He felt bound; still he would like to see eyes turning to him, and the smile of the maiden's lips, and hear the words so prettily whispered, "That is the young doctor." For the first time he could not free himself of the thought that Helena might be a hindrance to his campaign of advancement. He determined to settle with that thought. Her education was not in the way, she was educated; she was twenty-one years of age, he twenty-four--the difference, though too small, did not constitute a hindrance. What reasons could he have to fear that Helena might be a weight on him some time? Conscience declared that the first cause was his own vanity. He knew women little, and he wanted to know them much and to rule them. But there were other considerations which Yosef did not admit. He loved too little. In his soul lay enormous capitals of feeling; he had barely offered a small part of them in the name of Helena. He bore within him a dim consciousness of his powers; that foreboding deprived him of rest. He wanted to reach the foundation of things, but it was not easy for even such a self-conscious head as Yosef's to reach final results.
Besides, he did not know himself whether possible future triumphs were equal in value to Helena. To have near him for all future time a woman so charming and loving was the same as to seize in its flight a winged dream of happiness shooting by, but if besides he knew how many of those coming triumphs would be of tangible value, how many would deceive him, how many faces there were before him, he would not hesitate in the choice. But he had not met deceit yet face to face.