ntary discomfiture. I
laughed too, for he had scored a point. When a man has, say, a thousand
pounds wherewith to buy that much money's worth of household clutter, he
certainly is that household clutter's potential owner. Between us we
developed this incontrovertible proposition.

"Then why," said Barbara, "don't you go at once to Harrod's Stores and
purchase a comfortable home?"

"Because, my dear Barbara," said Jaffery, "I'm starting off for the
interior of China the day after to-morrow."

"China?" echoed Barbara vaguely.

"The interior of China?" I reechoed, with masculine definiteness.

"Why not? It isn't in Neptune or Uranus. You wouldn't go into hysterics
if I said I was going to Boulogne. Let him come with me, Barbara. It
would do him a thundering lot of good."

At this very faintly humorous proposal he laughed immoderately. I need
not say that I declined it. I should be as happy in the interior of
China as on an Albanian mountain. I asked him how long he would be away.

"A year or two," he replied casually.

"It must be a queer thing," said I, "to be born with no conception of
time and space."

"A couple of years pass pretty quick," said Jaffery.

"So does a lifetime," said I.

Well, this was just like Jaffery. No sooner home amid the amenities of
civilisation than the wander-fever seizes him again. In vain he pleaded
his job, the valuable copy he would send to his paper. I proved to him
it was but the mere lust of savagery. And he could not understand why we
should be startled by the announcement that within forty-eight hours he
would be on his way to lose himself for a couple of years in Crim
Tartary.

"Suppose I sprang a thing like that on you," said I. "Suppose I told you
I was starting to-morrow morning for the South Pole. What would you
say?"

"I should say you were a liar. Ho! ho! ho!"

In his mirth he rubbed his hands and feet together like a colossal fly.
The joke lasted him for the rest of the evening.

So, the next morning Jaffery left us with a "See you as soon as ever I
get back," and the day after that he sailed for China. We felt sad; not
only because Jaffery's vitality counted for something in the quiet
backwater of our life, but also because we knew that he went away a less
happy man than he had come. This time it was not sheer _Wanderlust_ that
had driven him into the wilderness. He had fled in the blind hope of
escaping from the unescapable. The ogre to whatsoever No Man's L