s by returning your manuscripts. The durability of
your nervous system depends entirely on how you utilize the next five
years."

"Go on," I encouraged him, "don't mind me. Sentence me to death if it
amuses you."

"It won't be death, but unless you fortify those nerves," he calmly went
on, "there probably will be disaster. It may take any one of several
forms."

"As, for instance?" I inquired, with pardonable curiosity.

"Oh, arterio-sclerosis, paralysis, insanity, something of that sort."

"Thank you kindly," I murmured, as I reached for the matches. "Can I
have my choice of the lot?"

"However," went on the big little doctor, "if you devote the next few
years to a program of diversified travel, you ought to lay up an account
of nerve-strength upon which you can draw _ad lib._ for forty or fifty
years to come. You should even have a surplus against the unfortunate
exigency of living on when you are old and useless."

"But I have traveled," I argued. "I've been to----"

He interrupted me with a snort, and swept my declarations aside,
unfinished.

"You have dabbled at travel, like a school-girl nibbles at chocolates.
Get out on the hike and stay out for a year or two. Build into your
artificial self something of the out-door animal. You have a fair
start--you were once an athlete." He rose to go down to his motor, and I
shouted after him contemptuous and profane criticism. Nevertheless
within the week I booked passage for the Mediterranean.

I found once more that Europe and the African fringe of the land-locked
sea have to offer to the hunger of the wanderlust only a stereotyped
table-d'hote. Shortly it cloys. Within several weeks one thing only had
promised to break the stagnant surface with a riffle of interest. And
that one thing puzzled me in no small degree, since it was not such a
matter as would ordinarily have challenged my attention. I have passed
with a glance many beautiful women, and felt no need to turn my head for
a further inspection. I am not of the cavaliering type, and yet here I
was finding myself interested, in a strange and indefinable way, in a
woman whose face I had not seen, and whose name I did not know. That, I
told myself, was the secret of it. It was exactly because she was
elusive, mysterious in fashion, that I found my flat interest piqued. I
never had more than the swish of her skirt or a glimpse of her
retreating figure, until it came about that sheer inquisitiveness gave
her