suppose you take me gently along your mental route."

Ronald flung himself, with a sigh of relief, into the deep basket-work
chair opposite Helen's. His boyish face cleared visibly; then
brightened into enthusiasm. He stretched out his legs, put his hands
behind his head, and looked admiringly across at his wife.

"Helen, you are so perfectly splendid in always understanding, always
making it quite easy for a fellow to tell you things. You have a way of
looking past all minor details, straight to the great essentials. Most
women would stand----"

"Never mind what most women would do, Ronnie. I never stand, if I can
sit down! It is a waste of useful energy. But you must tell me 'the
great essentials,' as they appear to you, if I am to view them properly.
Why do you want to go to Central Africa?"

Ronald leapt up and stood with his back to the mantel-piece.

"Helen, I have a new plot; a quite wonderful love-story; better than
anything I have done yet. But the scene is laid in Central Africa, and I
must go out there to get the setting vivid and correct. You remember how
thrilled we were the other day, by the account of that missionary chap,
who disappeared into the long grass, thirteen feet high, over twenty
years ago; lived and worked among the natives, cut off from all
civilisation; then, at last, crawled out again and saw a railway train
for the first time in twenty-three years; got on board, and came home,
full of wonderful tales of his experiences? Well--you know how, after he
had been out there a few years, he found he desperately needed a wife;
remembered a plucky girl he had known when he was a boy in England, and
managed to get a letter home, asking her to come out to him? She came,
and safely reached the place appointed, at the fringe of the wild
growth. There she waited several months. But at last the man who had
called to her in his need, crawled out of the long grass, took her to
himself, and they crawled in again--man and wife--and were seen no more,
until they reappeared many years later. Well--that true story has given
me the idea of a plot, which will, I verily believe, take the world by
storm! So original and thrilling! Far beyond any missionary
love-stories."

Helen's calm eyes looked into the excited shining of his.

"Dear, why shouldn't a missionary's love-story be as exciting as any
other? I don't quite see how you can better the strangely enthralling
tale to which we listened."

"Ah, don't