die. I didn't care then."

"At twenty-two! Why, you weren't grown up!"

"_You_ say that, at twenty-one?"

"It's different with a girl. I've had such a lot of things to make me
feel grown up."

"So have I, God knows." (By this time he was smoking like a chimney.)
"Did _you_ lose the one thing you'd wanted in the world? But no--I
mustn't ask that. I don't ask it."

"You may," I vouchsafed, charmed that--as one says of a baby--he was
"beginning to take notice." "No, frankly, I didn't lose the one thing in
the world I wanted most, because I've never quite known yet what I did
or do want most. But not knowing leaves you at loose ends, if you're
alone in the world as I am." Then, having said this, just to indicate
that my circumstances conduced to tacit sympathy with his, I hopped like
a sparrow to another branch of the same subject. "It's bad not to get
what we want. But it's dull not to want anything."

"Is it?" Burns asked almost fiercely. "I haven't got to that yet. I wish
I had. When I want a thing, it's in my nature to want it for good and
all. I want the thing I wanted before the war as much now as ever.
That's the principal trouble with me, I think. The hopelessness of
everything. The uselessness of the things you _can_ get."

"Can't you manage to want something you might possibly get?" I asked.

He smiled faintly. "That's much the same advice that the doctors have
given--the advice this Sir Humphrey Hale of the Carstairs will give
to-morrow. I'm sure. 'Try to take an interest in things as they are.'
Good heavens! that's just what I _can't_ do."

"_I_ don't give you that advice," I said. "It's worse than useless to
_try_ and take an interest. It's _stodgy_. What I mean is, _if_ an
interest, alias a chance of adventure, should breeze along, don't shut
the door on it. Let it in, ask it to sit down, and see how you like it.
But then--maybe you wouldn't recognize it as an adventure if you saw it
at the window!"

"Oh, I think I should do that!" he defended himself. "I'm man enough yet
to know an adventure when I meet it. That's why I came into your war.
But the war's finished, and so am I. Really, I don't see why any one
bothers about me. I wouldn't about myself, if they'd let me alone!"

"There I'm with you," said I. "I like to be let alone, to go my own way.
Still, people unfortunately feel bound to do their best. Mrs. Carstairs
has done hers. If Sir Humphrey gives you up, she'll thenceforward
consider herse