His letter in response to the one in which she informed him of her impending engagement to Eduard Desmond had confirmed her faith in his uncanny insight. She did not realize how vividly her untrammeled descriptions made people and conditions about her known to a student of human kind. If she always saw things more clearly herself after she had set them down in black and white, the clarity doubtless extended to other vision. He wrote from Russia, where he had been living for a while among the mouzhiks in order to understand how mouzhiks live. His curiosity about such things was insatiable. "I also have a wish to see how Tzars live, since it is an order that is passing," he added casually. "But I fear for one of my race that will be difficult. Mouzhiks have less reason to fear us Jews than have Tsars." Then he went off at one of his usual tangents, and described to Joan briefly the theory of vaccination. "It is a question of phagocytes, you understand. Metchnikoff's idea is that when a disease manifests itself a certain number of phagocytes detach themselves from the blood to fight it. The stronger the virus injected of that disease, the greater the number of phagocytes formed; and it is the presence of these detached phagocytes after the virus has run its course that render the patient immune from further attack." ("What," wondered bewildered Joan, "is the man talking about? It sounds like a medical almanac!") But as there was usually some method in Mr. Nikolai's tangents, she read on. At the end of the last page he enlightened her, and disposed of the affair with Eduard Desmond in two sentences. "By this time you will be recuperating from your first love-attack. Severe, doubtless, but so much the better. More phagocytes!" It was his only reference to her revelations with regard to Eduard Desmond. Evidently to the scientific mind love in its various manifestations was merely a form of mal-ease to which humanity is subject. Joan sincerely hoped that enough of the phagocytes had been released by the innoculation to render her immune from further attack forever. CHAPTER XXIV Social life, in a small American city that prides itself upon traditions of social life, may be as absorbing, if not as profitable, as that in any of the world's great capitals--perhaps more absorbing. For while it is possible in Paris, Rome, London, New York, to disappear at will out of the current and no questions asked, such a procedure would be as impracticable in one of the self-sufficient societies of our South or East as for a diving duck to remain ad libitum in the bottom of the duck-pond. He may remain, to be sure, even until he drowns; but his corpse need not expect a welcome when it returns to the surface, nor will there be any attempts to resuscitate him. It behooves a socially-inclined duck to hug the company of his fellows.