"Possibly as he was in love he was hanging on to his head, having already lost his heart." This from the future K.C. "But if his heart was in his mouth, how----" I was shouted down. Then we all thought hard. "What is the point, Curly?" This to me. "Yes! What's the matter with the sentence after all?" added S.-P. "Well, I can't quite say. You see she came along the corridor at midnight, we are told, and saw him, his well-shaped, etc. One doesn't like the excellent shape of his head being shoved in there. The fact, after all, was that his head was in his hands, and she surprised him, sorrowing in solitude." "But if his head was well-shaped, why not say so?" said the truthful Tudway. "Yes," nodded S.-P., "that may have been essential. If his head hadn't been well-shaped she mightn't have gushed all over him." "Hang it," I broke in desperately, "I don't care if it was well-shaped or not. The word doesn't fit. Any other word or none. You see it suggests--er--something outside the matter in hand, she may as well have said his mathematical----" They considered me beaten, and laughed horribly. "The next is, 'her superb young figure straightened confronting the sea.' Any remarks?" "She was playing to the gallery, of course," said S.-P., "or else she stood on a thistle." "Don't talk rot! I'm with Curly there. 'Superb' swanks it too much. There's nothing superb in the world except a destroyer at thirty knots." "Or the action of a blood filly going through her first pacings," I prompted. This raised a yell. "The next is, 'her skirts swung high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb.' Any remarks?" "That's naughty," said Square-Peg. "Besides, it doesn't say which limb." "There's no doubt about the limb," I said, "unless her arm was meant, in which case her skirts----" But an awful roar interrupted me. "Cut out 'limb' and substitute 'leg,'" suggested Tudway. "Worse and worse. If 'limb' suggests anatomy, 'leg' suggests----" "The Empire," they both screamed, and after the immoderate laughter had ceased I declared I wouldn't go on. We refilled our pipes, but Tudway grew horribly silent. After a long time we chaffed him about the _Sumana_, and offered him a kabob for his thoughts. "Ah!" he said, "it was that limb. It recalled----" Then he stopped and actually reddened; and nothing would induce him to go on. That set us all thinking. We both retired to bed, and with one eye I finished the story. It is quite a good one, and tells you many other things about the call of the rain. That reminded me of an evening years ago in far-away New Zealand, when in the heart of the great silences I looked through my tent door and saw the rain on the wild river and great forests and distant mountains....