hen the mood is on me, I don't
care to think of those times. I never feel really myself when it
happens. I seem to be listening to somebody else playing, and trying to
remember something I have hopelessly forgotten. It gives me a strained,
uncanny feeling, Helen."

"Does it, darling? Then let us talk of something else. Oh, Ronnie, you
must promise me to take care of your health out in that climate! I
believe you are going at the very worst time of year."

"I have to know it at its worst and at its hottest," he said. "But I
shall be all right. I'm strong as a horse, and sound in wind and limb."

"I hope you will get good food."

He laughed. "I expect to have to live on just whatever I can shoot or
grub up. You see, the more completely I leave all civilisation, the more
correctly I shall get my 'copy.' I can't crawl into the long grass,
carrying tins of sardines and bottles of Bass!"

"You might take meat lozenges," suggested Ronnie's wife.

"Meat lozenges, darling, are concentrated nastiness. I felt like an
unhealthy bullock the whole of the rest of the day when, to please you,
I sucked one while we were mountain climbing. I propose living on
interesting and unique fruits and roots--all the things which correspond
to locusts and wild honey. But, Helen, I am afraid there will be quite a
long time during which I shall not be able either to send or to receive
letters. We shall have to console ourselves with the trite old saying:
'No news is good news.' Of course, so far as I am concerned, it would be
useless to hear of any cause for anxiety or worry when I could not
possibly get back, or deal with it."

"You shall not hear of any worries, or have any anxieties, darling. If
difficulties arise, I will deal with them. You must keep a perfectly
free mind, all the time. For my part, I will try not to give way to
panics about you, if you will promise to cable occasionally, and to
write as often as you can."

"_You_ won't go and get ill, will you, Helen?"

She smiled, laying her cheek on the top of his head, as she bent over
him.

"I never get ill, darling. Like you, I am sound in wind and limb. We are
a most healthy couple."

"We shall both be thirty, Helen, before we meet again. You will attain
to that advanced age a month before I shall. On your birthday I shall
drink your health in some weird concoction of juices; and I shall say to
all the lions and tigers, hippopotamuses, cockatrices and asps, sitting
round my