sion?"

"Is it sitting now?"

"Adjourned till after Whitsuntide. But there's heaps of work to be done.

"Still," he added, "this is my one chance of any treatment."

The doctor made a little calculation. "Three weeks.... It's scarcely
time enough to begin."

"You're certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosen
tonics--"

"Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it." He decided to take a plunge. "I've just
been thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I'd like to see you
through this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be some
sort of beginning now. In this three weeks. Suppose...."

Sir Richmond leapt to his thought. "I'm free to go anywhere."

"Golf would drive a man of your composition mad?"

"It would."

"That's that. Still--. The country must be getting beautiful again
now,--after all the rain we have had. I have a little two-seater. I
don't know.... The repair people promise to release it before Friday."

"But _I_ have a choice of two very comfortable little cars. Why not be
my guest?"

"That might be more convenient."

"I'd prefer my own car."

"Then what do you say?"

"I agree. Peripatetic treatment."

"South and west. We could talk on the road. In the evenings. By the
wayside. We might make the beginnings of a treatment. ... A simple tour.
Nothing elaborate. You wouldn't bring a man?"

"I always drive myself."

Section 3

"There's something very pleasant," said the doctor, envisaging his own
rash proposal, "in travelling along roads you don't know and seeing
houses and parks and villages and towns for which you do not feel in
the slightest degree responsible. They hide all their troubles from the
road. Their backyards are tucked away out of sight, they show a brave
face; there's none of the nasty self-betrayals of the railway approach.
And everything will be fresh still. There will still be a lot of
apple-blossom--and bluebells.... And all the while we can be getting on
with your affair."

He was back at the window now. "I want the holiday myself," he said.

He addressed Sir Richmond over his shoulder. "Have you noted how fagged
and unstable EVERYBODY is getting? Everybody intelligent, I mean."

"It's an infernally worrying time."

"Exactly. Everybody suffers."

"It's no GOOD going on in the old ways--"

"It isn't. And it's a frightful strain to get into any new ways. So here
we are.

"A man," the doctor expanded, "isn't a creature in vacuo. He's himself
and his w