e bolt camp except to
come down to Hollister's house.

Lawanne seemed to be a favored guest now, at Bland's. Lawanne worked
upon his book, but by fits and starts, working when he did work with a
feverish concentration. He had a Chinese boy for house-servant. He
might be found at noon or at midnight sprawled in a chair beside a
pot-bellied stove, scrawling in an ungainly hand across sheets of
yellow paper. He had no set hours for work. When he did work, when he
had the vision and the fit was on and words came easily, chance
callers met with scant courtesy. But he had great stores of time to
spare, for all that. Some of it he spent at Bland's, waging an
interminable contest at cribbage with Bland, coming up now and then
with the Blands to spend an evening at Hollister's.

"It's about a man who wrecked his life by systematically undermining
his own illusions about life," he answered one day Hollister's curious
inquiry as to what the new book was about, "and of how finally a very
assiduously cultivated illusion made him quite happy at last. Sound
interesting?"

"How could he deliberately cultivate an illusion?" Doris asked. "If
one's intelligence ever classifies a thing as an illusion, no
conscious effort will ever turn it into a reality."

"Oh, I didn't say _he_ cultivated the illusion," Lawanne laughed.

"Besides, do you really think that illusions are necessary to
happiness?" Doris persisted.

"To some people," Lawanne declared. "But let's not follow up that
philosophy. We're getting into deep water. Let's wade ashore. We'll
say whatever is is right, and let it go at that. It will be quite all
right for you to offer me a cup of tea, if your kitchen mechanic will
condescend. That Chink of mine is having a holiday with my shotgun,
trying to bag a brace of grouse for dinner. So I throw myself on your
mercy."

"This man Bland is the dizzy limit," Lawanne observed, when the tea
and some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought another
rifle the other day--paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he
has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in
grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom run
across such a combination of physical perfection and child-like
irresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income the
other day--'inkum' in his inimitable pronunciation. I suggested that
right here in this valley he could earn a considerable number of
shek