s, pressing forward for enrolment.
Three over-worked doctors pounded and sounded them, prodding them on to
a weighing-machine, measuring their height and chest expansion, testing
their eyes. Eric had tried to cheat by memorizing the order of the
descending black capitals while he lay on a sofa breathing freely or
holding his breath as he was ordered; but the chart was changed before
his turn came. When he had dressed, the examining doctor referred him to
a row of three weary clerks at a baize-covered table, who informed him
that he was rejected. The folio form contained a comment--cardiac
something; he could not read the second word. There was no appeal, and,
after a moment's indecision, he recognized that there was nothing to do
but to go home.

Outside the office his neighbour in the queue overtook and hailed him
with the words: "What luck?"

"They've spun me," Eric answered. "There was just a chance that I might
slip through in the crowd. . . . What did they say to you?"

"I was spun, too," his companion answered. Then he laughed uneasily and
his face was drawn and dazed in the August sunshine. "You wouldn't think
you could have much the matter with you and not know anything about it.
I always thought I was a first-class life; I haven't had a day's illness
in ten years----"

"What did they say?" Eric asked, as the other hesitated in bewilderment.

"They give me anything between three and six months," he answered,
moistening two grey lips. "One of the fellows . . . took me on one side,
you know . . . asked me a few questions . . ." He broke off and waved to
a taxi which was rolling lazily down Whitehall. "I must go and see my
own man. Good-bye."

"Good-bye! Good luck!" Eric cried.

As he walked home he wondered how much composure he would shew if a
sentence of death were slapped at him like an overdue bill. He wondered,
too, what he would do with those testing, supreme three months, if they
were all that he was allowed. Stoicism, hedonism, the faith of his
childhood, new-fangled mysticisms would join hands and hold revel round
his soul for those twelve weeks, those eighty-four days, those two
thousand and sixteen hours. . . . The speculation fascinated him until
he almost fancied that the sentence had been passed on him. Gradually he
wove a drama round it; line by line it took shape for a book that was to
be subtiler, finer and more sincere than anything that he had ever
written. If only he could find time for