"Ill?" Lois exclaimed with some alarm. She put her racquet on the table and came and slipped her hand through the Colonel's arm. "You don't think he is ill?" she asked earnestly. Colonel Carmichael shook his head. "No," he said, "not exactly ill." He laid his hand gently upon hers, so that she could not draw it back. "Let us go outside and see if he is coming," he went on. The old man--for sorrow and physical weakness had made him older than his years--led the way on to the verandah, still holding Lois' hand in his own. He could not have explained the indefinable force which drove him out of his wife's presence. His ear shrank from her hard, matter-of-fact voice and undisturbed optimism. She who had never had any mood but the one energetic and untirable one, had no comprehension for the changing shades of his temper--would, indeed, have rather scorned the necessity of understanding them. She did not believe in what she called "vapors," and when they ventured to cross her path she swept them away again--or thought she did--with a none too sparing brush. Unfortunately, there are some characters who can not overcome depression, be it reasonable or unreasonable, simply because someone else happens to be cheerful. The source of their melancholy lies too deep, and the more hidden it is, the more inexplicable, the harder it is to be overcome. It is as though a chord in their temperament is linked to the future, and vibrates with painful presentiment before that which is to come. Colonel Carmichael was one of these so-called sensitive and moody people--quite unknown to himself. When the cloud hung heavily over his head, he said it was his liver or the heat, and took his cure in the form of solitude, thus escaping his wife's pitiless condemnation. And on this afternoon, yielding to his instinct, he sought to be alone with Lois. Lois never disturbed him or jarred on his worn-out nerves. In spite of her energy and vigor, there was a side of her nature which responded absolutely to his own, and with her he could always be sure of a sympathetic silence, or, what was still more, a gentle sadness which helped him more than any overflow of strident high spirits.