"Well, it was en route, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must
tell you," he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. "I hear you call me in
the night sometimes, and I start up and say 'Yes, Di!' out of my sleep.
It's a queer hallucination. I've got you on the brain, certainly."

"It seems to vex you--certainly," she said, opening the book that lay in
her lap, "and your eyes trouble me to-day. They've got a look that used
to be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look I
don't understand and don't like. I suppose it's always so. The real
business of life is trying to understand each other."

"You have wonderful thoughts for one that's had so little chance," he
said. "That's because you're a genius, I suppose. Teaching can't give
that sort of thing--the insight."

"What is the matter, Flood?" she asked suddenly again, her breast
heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. "I heard a man say
once that you were 'as deep as the sea.' He did not mean it kindly, but
I do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were
you going when you came across me here?"

"To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding
towards a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.

"Old Busby!" she rejoined in amazement. "What do you want with him
--not medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?"

"He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than
they'll ever pay him."