The Doctor's mouth twitched and he took a breath as if about to speak. Van Dorn stopped him: "Don't cut in, Doc Jim--let me say it all out. I'm young. I love the moonlight and the stars and I never go through a wood that I do not see trysting places there--and I never see a great stretch of prairie under the sunshine that I do not put in a beautiful woman and go following her--not for her--Doctor Jim, but for the joy of pursuit, for the thrill of uncovering a bared, naked soul, and the overwhelming danger of it. God--man, I've stood afraid to breathe, flattened against a wall and heard the man-beast growl and sniff, hunting me. I love to love and be loved; but not less do I love to hunt and be hunted. I've hidden under trees, I've skulked in the shadows, I've walked boldly in the sunlight with my life in my hand to meet a woman's eyes, to feel her guilty shudder in my arms. Oh, Doctor Jim, you don't understand the riot in my blood that the moon makes shining through the trees upon the water, with great, shadowy glades, and the tinkle of cow bells far away, and a woman afraid of me--and I afraid of her--and nothing but the stars and the night between us." He rose and began pacing the piazza as he continued speaking. "It's always been so with me--as early as my boyhood it was so. I often wake in the lonely nights and think of them all over again--the days and nights, the girls and women who have flashed bright and radiant into my life. Over and over again, I repeat to my soul their names, over and over I live the hours we have spent together, the dangers, the delights, the cruel misery of it all and then at the turn of the street, at the corner of a room, in the winking of an eye I see another face, it looks a challenge at me and I am out on the high road of another romance. I've got to go! It's part of my life; it's the pulse of my blood." He stood excited with his deep, beady, black eyes burning and his proud, vain face flushed and his hands a-tremble. The Doctor saw that he was in the midst of a physical and mental turmoil that could not be checked.