The Opposite House: A Novel — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

52 The Opposite louse. tenance, though not ugly, had a look which uncon- sciously inspired fear. Narrow, colorless, with a perpetual smile resting on the thin lips, it produced the impression of a white plaster cast, on whose temples two blue veins have been drawn. Only the deep-set eyes gave life, a strange, wavering life, to the face. Young girls shunned him, women usually disliked him, but men laughed at both and declared that the doctor was an unusually interest- ing and agreeable man. True, there were some sharp tongues among them which said that Brand might have served as a model when Kaulbach sketched his Mephistopheles. The doctor resumed the conversation. “You are a happy man, and that is enviable; but you lack one thing.” “What may that be?” asked Traugott, smiling. “A wife, a loyal and beautiful companion for life. Tell me, Gerrald, do you wish to live for yourself alone? Whenever I have thought of you, I have always imagined an ideal maiden at your side.” Traugott smiled mournfully. “T have much to accomplish ere I can win her.” A swift glance flashed across Brand’s face, the glance of an adder, which sees its victim in the dis- tance : “Then you know where to turn to obtain her? It seems to me that you have already chosen !” cComiclbooks.conn