“Then why,” said Barbara, “don’t you go at once to Harrod’s Stores and purchase a comfortable home?”

“Because, my dear Barbara,” said Jaffery, “I’m starting off for the interior of China the day after to-morrow.”

“China?” echoed Barbara vaguely.

“The interior of China?” I reechoed, with masculine definiteness.

“Why not?  It isn’t in Neptune or Uranus.  You wouldn’t go into hysterics if I said I was going to Boulogne.  Let him come with me, Barbara.  It would do him a thundering lot of good.”

At this very faintly humorous proposal he laughed immoderately.  I need not say that I declined it.  I should be as happy in the interior of China as on an Albanian mountain.  I asked him how long he would be away.

“A year or two,” he replied casually.

“It must be a queer thing,” said I, “to be born with no conception of time and space.”

“A couple of years pass pretty quick,” said Jaffery.

“So does a lifetime,” said I.

Well, this was just like Jaffery.  No sooner home amid the amenities of civilisation than the wander-fever seizes him again.  In vain he pleaded his job, the valuable copy he would send to his paper.  I proved to him it was but the mere lust of savagery.  And he could not understand why we should be startled by the announcement that within forty-eight hours he would be on his way to lose himself for a couple of years in Crim Tartary.

“Suppose I sprang a thing like that on you,” said I.  “Suppose I told you I was starting to-morrow morning for the South Pole.  What would you say?”

“I should say you were a liar.  Ho! ho! ho!”

In his mirth he rubbed his hands and feet together like a colossal fly.  The joke lasted him for the rest of the evening.

So, the next morning Jaffery left us with a “See you as soon as ever I get back,” and the day after that he sailed for China.  We felt sad; not only because Jaffery’s vitality counted for something in the quiet backwater of our life, but also because we knew that he went away a less happy man than he had come.  This time it was not sheer Wanderlust that had driven him into the wilderness.  He had fled in the blind hope of escaping from the unescapable.  The ogre to whatsoever No Man’s Land he betook himself would forever be haunted by the phantom of the elf. . . .  It was just as well he had gone, said Barbara.

A man of intense appetites and primitive passions, like Jaffery, for all his loyalty and lovable childishness, was better away from the neighbour’s wife who had happened to engage his affections.  If he lost his head. . . .