--DO!" said Fifi, with surprising emphasis for so weak a little
voice. "You need first a good girl friend, one lots older and better
than me--one just like Sharlee. O if only you and she _would_ be
friends!--she'd be the very best in the world! And then you need men
friends, plenty of them, and to go around with them, and everything. You
ought to like _men_ more, Mr. Queed! You ought to learn to _be_ like
them, and--"

"Be like them!" he interrupted, "I am like them. Why," he conceded
generously, "I am one of them."

Fifi dismissed this with a smile, but he immediately added: "Has it
occurred to you that, apart from my greater concentration on my work, I
am different from other men?"

"Why, Mr. Queed, you are no more like them than I am! You don't do any
of the things they do. You don't--"

"Such as what? Now, Fifi, let us be definite as we go along. Suppose
that it was my ambition to be, as you say, like other men. Just what
things, in your opinion, should I do?"

"Well, smoke--that's one thing that all men do. And fool around more
with people--laugh and joke, and tell funny stories and all. And then
you could take an interest in your appearance--your clothes, you know;
and be interested in all sorts of things going on around you, like
politics and baseball. And go to see girls and take them out sometimes,
like to the theatre. Some men that are popular drink, but of course I
don't care for that."

Fifi, of course, had no idea that the little Doctor's world had been
shattered to its axis that morning by three minutes' talk from Colonel
Cowles. Therefore, though conscious that there never was a man who did
not get a certain pleasure from talking himself over, she was secretly
surprised at the patience, even the interest, with which he listened to
her. She would have been still more surprised to know that his wonderful
memory was nailing down every word with machine-like accuracy.

She expounded her little thesis in considerable detail, and at the end
he said:--

"As I've told you, Fifi, my first duty is toward my book--to give it to
the cause of civilization at the earliest possible moment. Therefore,
the whole question is one of time, rather than of deliberate personal
inclination. At present I literally cannot afford to give time to
matters which, while doubtless pleasant enough in their fashion--"

"That's what you would have said about the exercise, two months ago. And
now look, how it's helped you! And th