Queed started as though he had been stung.  He cleared his throat nervously.

“No doubt that would be beneficial—­in a sense, but I cannot afford to take the time from My Book—­”

“That’s where you got it dead wrong.  You can’t afford not to take the time.  Any doctor’ll tell you the same as me, that you’ll never finish your book at all at the clip you’re hitting now.  You’ll go with nervous prostration, and it’ll wipe you out like a fly.  Why, Doc,” said Klinker, impressively, “you don’t realize the kind of life you’re leading—­all indoors and sedentary and working twenty hours a day.  I come in pretty late some nights, but I never come so late that there ain’t a light under your door.  A man can’t stand it, I tell you, playing both ends against the middle that away.  You got to pull up, or it’s out the door feet first for you.”

Queed said uneasily:  “One important fact escapes you, Mr. Klinker.  I shall never let matters progress so far.  When I feel my health giving way—­”

“Needn’t finish—­heard it all before.  They think they’re going to stop in time, but they never do.  Old prostration catches ’em first every crack.  You think an hour a day exercise would be kind of a waste, ain’t that right?  Kind of a dead loss off’n your book and studies?”

“I certainly do feel—­”

“Well, you’re wrong.  Listen here.  Don’t you feel some days as if mebbe you could do better writing and harder writing if only you didn’t feel so mean?”

“Well ...  I will frankly confess that sometimes—­”

“Didn’t I know it!  Do you know what, Doc?  If you knocked out a little time for reg’lar exercise, you’d find when bedtime came, that you’d done better work than you ever did before.”

Queed was silent.  He had the most logical mind in the world, and now at last Klinker had produced an argument that appealed to his reason.

“I’ll put it to you as a promise,” said Klinker, eyeing him earnestly.  “One hour a day exercise, and you do more work in twenty-four hours than you’re doing now, besides feelin’ one hundred per cent better all the time.”

Still Queed was silent. One hour a day!

“Try it for only a month,” said Klinker the Tempter.

“I’ll help you—­glad to do it—­I need the drill myself.  Gimme an hour a day for just a month, and I’ll bet you the drinks you wouldn’t quit after that for a hundred dollars.”

Queed turned away from Klinker’s honest eyes, and wrestled the bitter thing out. Thirty Hours stolen from His Book!... Yesterday, even an hour ago, he would not have considered such an outrage for a moment.  But now, driving him irresistibly toward the terrible idea, working upon him far more powerfully than his knowledge of headache, even than Klinker’s promise of a net gain in his working ability, was this new irrationally disturbing knowledge that he was a physical incompetent....  If he had begun systematic exercise ten years ago, probably he could thrash Mr. Pat to-day.