do you think it is, then?"

"I think it's something in you."

"Of course, of course. But what started it? That's what I want to know.
Something's happened. Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable.
It's--it's uncanny. For, you know, I oughtn't to feel like this. I got
bad news this morning."

"Bad news?"

"Yes. My sister's little girl is very ill. They think it's meningitis.
They're in awful trouble. And _I_--_I_'m feeling like this."

"Don't let it distress you."

"It doesn't distress me. It only puzzles me. That's the odd thing. Of
course, I'm sorry and I'm anxious and all that; but I _feel_ so well."

"You _are_ well. Don't be morbid."

"I haven't told my wife yet. About the child, I mean. I simply daren't.
It'll frighten her. She won't know how I'll take it, and she'll think
it'll make me go all queer again."

He paused and turned to her.

"I say, if she _did_ know how I'm taking it, she'd think _that_ awfully
queer, wouldn't she?" He paused.

"The worst of it is," he said, "I've got to tell her."

"Will you leave it to me?" Agatha said. "I think I can make it all
right."

"How?" he queried.

"Never mind how. I can."

"Well," he assented, "there's hardly anything you can't do."

That was how she came to tell Milly.

She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in
Agatha's house. Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his
books; just as he used to be, only more so. So much more so that she was
a little disturbed about it. She was afraid it wouldn't last. And again
she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place.

"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the
place."

"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things
can't reach him."

"Bad news reached him to-day."

"Aggy--what?" Milly whispered in her fright.

"His sister is very anxious about her little girl."

"What's wrong?"

Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.

"Oh----" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her
sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud.

"If the child dies it will make him ill again!"

"No Milly, it won't."

"It will, I tell you. It's always been that sort of thing that does it."

"And supposing there was something that keeps it off?"

"What is there? What is there?"

"I believe there's something. Would you mind awfully if it wasn't the
place?"

"What do you mean, Agatha?" (There was