"You really are the most impossible person," she
remarked. "What do you need me for?"

He stepped back to his usual seat, and pointed to a small mossy bank
beside him. "Come and sit down there, and let's think. . . ."

After a moment's hesitation she did as he said.

"It's rather a knotty problem, isn't it?" he continued after a moment.
"I might want you to flirt with me in order to avert my suicide in the
pond through boredom. . . ."

"You may want," she retorted.

"But it's in the official programme?"

"You're not on the official list," she flashed back.

"Worse and worse," he murmured. "I begin to despair. However, I won't
try you as highly as that. I will just ask you a plain, honest
question. And I rely on you to answer me truthfully. . . . Do you
think I should be a more attractive being; do you think I should be
more capable of grappling with those great problems which--ah--surround
us on all sides, if I could dissect rats--or even mice?" he added
thoughtfully after a pause.

The girl looked at him in amazement. "Are you trying to be funny?" she
asked at length.

"Heaven forbid!" he said fervently. "I was never more serious in my
life. But, in that book,"--he pointed to one lying between
them--"everybody, who is anybody dissects rodents."

She picked up the book and gazed at the title. "But this is the book
everybody's talking about," she said.

"I am nothing if not fashionable," returned Vane.

"And do they dissect rats in it?"

"Don't misunderstand me, and take too gloomy a view of the situation,"
said Vane reassuringly. "They do other things besides. . . .
Brilliant things, all most brilliantly written about; clever things,
all most cleverly told. But whenever there's a sort of gap to be
filled up, a _mauvais quart d'heure_ after luncheon, the hero runs off
and deals with a mouse. And even if he doesn't, you know he
could. . . . And the heroine! It's a fundamental part of all their
educations, their extraordinary brilliance seems to rest on it as a
foundation."

She looked at him curiously. "I'm not particularly dense," she said
after a while, "but I must admit you rather defeat me."

"Joan," answered Vane seriously, and she made no protest this time at
the use of her name, "I rather defeat myself. In the old days I never
thought at all--but if I ever did I thought straight. Now my mind is
running round in circles. I chase after it; think I'm off at last--and
then find