hat is the objection to Italy?"

The doctor put his great hand solemnly on his young friend's shoulder.
"The medical schools in that country are recovering their past
reputation," he said. "They are becoming active centres of physiological
inquiry. You will be dragged into it, to a dead certainty. They're sure
to try what they can strike out by collision with a man like you. What
will become of that overworked mind of yours, when a lot of professors
are searching it without mercy? Have you ever been to Canada?"

"No. Have you?"

"I have been everywhere. Canada is just the place for you, in this
summer season. Bracing air; and steady-going doctors who leave the fools
in Europe to pry into the secrets of Nature. Thousands of miles of land,
if you like riding. Thousands of miles of water, if you like sailing.
Pack up, and go to Canada."

What did all this mean? Was he afraid that his colleague might stumble
on some discovery which he was in search of himself? And did the
discovery relate to his own special subject of brains and nerves? Ovid
made an attempt to understand him.

"Tell me something about yourself, Benjulia," he said. "Are you
returning to your regular professional work?"

Benjulia struck his bamboo stick emphatically on the gravel-walk.
"Never! Unless I know more than I know now."

This surely meant that he was as much devoted to his chemical
experiments as ever? In that case, how could Ovid (who knew nothing of
chemical experiments) be an obstacle in the doctor's way? Baffled thus
far, he made another attempt at inducing Benjulia to explain himself.

"When is the world to hear of your discoveries?" he asked.

The doctor's massive forehead gathered ominously into a frown, "Damn the
world!" That was his only reply.

Ovid was not disposed to allow himself to be kept in the dark in this
way. "I suppose you are going on with your experiments?" he said.

The gloom of Benjulia's grave eyes deepened: they stared with a stern
fixedness into vacancy. His great head bent slowly over his broad
breast. The whole man seemed to be shut up in himself. "I go on a way of
my own," he growled. "Let nobody cross it."

After that reply, to persist in making inquiries would only have ended
in needlessly provoking an irritable man. Ovid looked back towards
Carmina. "I must return to my friends," he said.

The doctor lifted his head, like a man awakened. "Have I been rude?" he
asked. "Don't talk to me about my experime