illness made, while it lasted, a great hole--but I dare say there
would have been a hole at any rate. The earth we tread has more
pockets than a billiard-table. The great thing is now to keep on
my feet."

"That's exactly what I mean."

Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes--such pleasant eyes as he had--
in which, as I now recall their expression, I seem to have seen a
dim imagination of his fate. He was fifty years old, and his
illness had been cruel, his convalescence slow. "It isn't as if I
weren't all right."

"Oh if you weren't all right I wouldn't look at you!" I tenderly
said.

We had both got up, quickened as by this clearer air, and he had
lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one, which with an
intenser smile, by way of answer to my exclamation, he applied to
the flame of his match. "If I weren't better I shouldn't have
thought of THAT!" He flourished his script in his hand.

"I don't want to be discouraging, but that's not true," I returned.
"I'm sure that during the months you lay here in pain you had
visitations sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think
of more and more all the while. That's what makes you, if you'll
pardon my familiarity, so respectable. At a time when so many
people are spent you come into your second wind. But, thank God,
all the same, you're better! Thank God, too, you're not, as you
were telling me yesterday, 'successful.' If YOU weren't a failure