en. I do nothing myself. I'm always making up
my mind to take over a little corner, but it takes a long time to make
up my mind. I don't want to dig and delve. I enjoy the flowers better
when I get them without any trouble. It would be simply an effort to
try to find an interest.--Do you believe in troubling to find an
interest, when it doesn't come naturally?"

"Yes," Dane said simply, and Cassandra stared at him with a feeling of
check. She had not expected that quiet "yes"; it carried with it a
finality which put an end to argument.

"I have had to do it, you see!" he added. "The thing which _did_
interest me became impossible, so I was obliged to find something else
to fill the gap."

Cassandra lay back against the cushions with an exaggerated sigh of
resignation.

"Oh, dear! here we are back at our Second Bests! I hate Second Bests,
and makeshifts of every description, and I don't recognise any
obligation to adopt them. If I can gain an interest only at the cost of
something it doesn't interest me to do, how can it be an interest at
all? I'm talking nonsense, but it's your fault... You are so painfully
philosophic... Does a land agency _really_ fill the gap left by the old
regiment, and its associations?"

"Nothing near it. But it helps. It is several degrees better than
nothing." Peignton spoke resolutely, but his face twitched, and
Cassandra was smitten with compunction.

"Ah! I shouldn't have said it. It was mean of me. When you are so
brave..." Her voice sank to a tenderness of which she was unaware, as
she asked the next question: "What was it? I never heard more than just
that you had a breakdown!"

"Lungs," he said simply. "I had a cough, and it stuck to me, and I lost
weight, but I never dreamt of anything serious. It was a bit of a--jar!
I was packed off home to a sanatorium, and came out at the end of six
months with a clean bill of health. I've been up to be vetted every few
months since. The last time it was a new fellow, and he could not spot
the weak place, so I'm all right, you see; it has just made me
physically a few years older than I really am. Given care, and an
outdoor life, I have as good a chance as another man."

"Oh, of course. So many people... It's _nothing_ now, compared with
what it used to be," Cassandra assented hurriedly. _That_ was the
reason of the subtly appealing look which had puzzled her from her first
meeting with this man! He had looked