"Yes, but not unwelcome. I left London three days ago, and am going back to-morrow. I am eccentric, as you know, and, what is more useful, I have the reputation of being so. Thus, nobody wonders if I disappear for a few days." To her great relief and her hardly less surprise, Marie found not the slightest difficulty in assuming a perfectly natural manner, and even mentally classed it under the heading of phenomena which show that ordinary people in trying circumstances for the most part behave normally. It was natural to her, in fact, to be natural. But even as she drew these comforting conclusions, she had leisure to observe that Jim, too, was in the grip of some inward struggle. Its nature she did not try to guess, but continued talking under a sense of stress, a fear of silences. "You know my gospel, do you not?" she said, "or, rather, I am sure you do not, as I have only formulated it to myself during this last day or two. There are two halves to the world, which make the whole, and each is the antidote to the other. One half is people; the other half is things. Now, the country is the place of things, and London of people. Cows, flowers, hay, all these are a certain antidote to the poisoning which unmixed people give one. In the same way, one flies from the country to town to take the antidote to the poison, a narcotic one, of things. Dipsomaniacs, so to speak, live entirely in London. They die young; it is a quick poison. The opposite dipsomaniacs live entirely in the country; it is a slow poison, and they live, or, at any rate, do not die, until a very advanced age. But oh, Jim, what a difference there is between living and not dying! They sound the same thing, but there is all the difference in the world between them." Jim stirred his sugarless tea slowly, then drank it quickly and put down the cup. Being a man, airy nothings were not part of his stock in trade, a deficiency from a merely social standpoint. "And so you have been poisoned with people?" he said directly. "I feel uncomfortable; I am afraid I have interrupted the cure." "Not a bit. The treatment is over, and I am going back to London to-morrow. You are the junction, so to speak, where some one gets in, where one first sees the smoke and the sea of houses. But who told you I was here?" "Jack told me," he said. "Why?" On his words Marie suddenly became conscious that definite drama had entered. From this point she saw herself as she might see a character in a play, with a feeling of irresponsibility. The author of the play was responsible. It was, in fact, overwhelmingly interesting to know the manner in which Jack had said this. "When did you see him?" she asked. "This morning only, and by accident. He suggested I should come here, in fact, and escort you back to London." "But I am not going to-day," said Marie. "No; he expects you back to-morrow. He suggested I should spend the night here, and come back with you then."