a Balkan dung-heap,
and purity, and--oh, all sorts of things.'

"'Go on,' I said, 'you have evidently included me in the list. How would
you describe it?'

"'Well,' he replied, rubbing his nose, 'from what you tell me, I
shouldn't pronounce you in any great danger of anything. We can say you
have been suffering from a faith in an impracticable felicity.' And he
laughed.

"'But that is a condemnation of romance!' I protested. He shrugged his
shoulders.

"'We shall never run short of romance,' he declared. 'The great thing is
to avoid getting mixed up in it or if you do, you mustn't imagine, as
you were about to do, that it can be carried about the world. Of course
I know there is a fatal fascination about the idea. I thought of
something like that myself at one time. A wonderful experience! But it
wouldn't have done.'

"'You don't believe in love then?' I asked, curious to know how the
brother of seven sisters regarded this matter.

"'Oh, love!' he echoed, shrugging again. 'Love is nothing. It happens
all the time to everybody. It Is the romantic business I thought you
were speaking of.'

"'You draw a distinction, then?'

"'Why, of course. Look here, I'll tell you. I had a wild, romantic
passion once. Think of it, a casualty surgeon in a London hospital,
carried away, positively carried away. And the subject of it was an
Irish colleen. Yes, I was infatuated simply and solely with that girl's
green cloak and hood and her green stockings and black pumps. I have
been told since by an Irishman that girls in Ireland never dream of
wearing such a rig. That doesn't matter. I had read of Irish colleens,
just as you, for example, might have read of Persian princesses or
Russian countesses, and the glamour of it carried me away. And this
colleen of mine, with her green cloak which she'd got from a theatrical
costumier, represented a romantic ideal. Very nice clever sort of girl,
a newspaper woman she was. But it wouldn't have done. Never try to make
an episode anything else. We parted and I believe she's married now.'

"'That about sums it up,' I said.

"'It does. Get a night's sleep and you'll see it in the same light. You
have had an accumulation of romantic impacts, and I expect a sea-going
life leaves one very much at the mercy of stray impressions. A ship's
surgeon once remarked to me that no human intellect could survive a
nautical training.' And he laughed again.

"That," said Mr. Spenlove, "was how he talked