em as on fuel for a perishing fire.

Heedless of the frivolous interruption, the little gentleman was
working himself into a second intellectual fury.

"Take hypnotism again--there's another abstraction for you----"

Here Mrs. Fazakerly threw up her hands. "My dear Colonel, _de
grace!_ If it's an abstraction, why get into a passion about it?
Life isn't long enough. You're worrying your brain into
fiddlesticks--fiddlestrings I mean, of course. This child doesn't
look after you. You ought to have something tied over your head to
keep it down; it's like a Jack-in-the-box, a candle blazing away at
both ends, a sword wearing out its what's-his-name; it's wearing out
your friends, too. _We_ can't live at intellectual high pressure, if
you can."

The Colonel softened visibly under the delicious flattery of her
appeal; he smiled at her and at Durant; he came down from his
heights and made a concession to the popular taste. "Well, then,
take influenza----"

"We'd very much rather not take it, if it's all the same to you."

"Take what?"

"Why, the influenza--the bacilli, or whatever they are. Or do the
bacilli take _you_?"

"My dear lady, you don't know what you're talking about. The bacilli
theory is--is--is a silly theory."

And Durant actually smiled; for his own brain was softening under
the debilitating influence. He would not be surprised at anything he
might do himself; he might even sink into that sickly state in which
people see puns in everything and everything in puns; it would be
the effect of the place.

"Well, it made you very ill last winter, that's all I know."

The wrinkles stopped dancing over the Colonel's face; his
shirt-front sank; he was touched with an infinite tenderness and
pity for himself.

"Yes. But I had a fit of the real thing. It left me without a
particle of muscle--legs mere thread-papers, and no brain----"

"Cherry-tart, Mr. Durant?"

The voice was Miss Tancred's. It was keen, incisive; it cut the
Colonel's sentence like a knife. But if she had meant to kill it the
unfilial attempt was foiled.

"No brain at all, Durant." He held up a forefinger, demonstrating on
the empty air. "That, mind you, is the test, the mark of true
influenza--the _ut_-ter, abso_lute_ collapse of brain power."

"Im_bacilli_ty, in short."

Having emitted this feeble spark, Durant's intellect went out
altogether. Trusting to his face not to betray him, he inquired
gravely if it was long since the Colo