d I, "make this your new habit? In the place
of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the bungalow.
What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have always
done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that's over--you can't get
things back as they were. But why not come and talk about your work to me;
use me as a sort of wall against which you may throw your thoughts and
catch them again? It's certain I don't know enough to steal your ideas
myself--and I know no scientific men--"

I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing, attracted him. "But
I'm afraid I should bore you," he said.

"You think I'm too dull?"

"Oh, no; but technicalities--"

"Anyhow, you've interested me immensely this afternoon."

"Of course it would be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one's ideas
so much as explaining them. Hitherto--"

"My dear sir, say no more."

"But really can you spare the time?"

"There is no rest like change of occupation," I said, with profound
conviction.

The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. "I am already greatly
indebted to you," he said.

I made an interrogative noise.

"You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming," he
explained.

I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned away.

Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must
have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former fashion.
The faint echo of "zuzzoo" came back to me on the breeze....

Well, after all, that was not my affair....

He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered
two lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an
air of being extremely lucid about the "ether" and "tubes of force," and
"gravitational potential," and things like that, and I sat in my other
folding-chair and said, "Yes," "Go on," "I follow you," to keep him
going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think he ever
suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments when I
doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was resting from
that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me clearly for a
space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of them. Sometimes my
attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and stare at
him, wondering whether, after all, it would not be better to use him as a
central figure in a good