“Poor old boy!  We’ll soon put all that right.  You see you were pretty bad, while you were bad; and all kinds of precautions were necessary.  We felt sure of a complete recovery, and I always predicted that it would be sudden.  But it is bound to take a little while to get all your surroundings readjusted.  Why not go home at once?  Pack up and go back to Hollymead this afternoon, and have a real jolly Christmas there—­you, and Helen, and the kid.”

“The kid?” queried Ronnie, perplexed.  “What kid?  Oh, you mean my ’cello—­the Infant of Prague.”

Dick, meanwhile, had bitten his tongue severely.

“Yes, the jolly old Infant of Prague, of course.  Is it ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘it’?  I forget.”

“It,” replied Ronnie, gravely.  “In the peace of its presence one forgets all wearying ‘he and she’ problems.  Yes, I want most awfully to get back to my ’cello.  I want to make sure it is not broken; and I want to make sure it is no dream, that I can play.  But—­I don’t want to go, unless I can go alone.  Can’t you prescribe complete solitude, as being absolutely essential for me?  Dick, I’m wretched!  I don’t care where I go; but I want to get away by myself.”

“Why, old man?”

“Because my wife still considers me insane.”

“Nonsense, Ron!  And don’t talk of being insane.  You were never that.  Some subtle malarial poison, we shall never know what, got into your blood, affected your brain, and you’ve had a bad time—­a very bad time—­of being completely off your balance; the violent stage being followed by loss of memory, and for a time, though mercifully you knew nothing about it, complete loss of sight.  But these things returned, one by one; and, as soon as you were ready for it, you awoke to consciousness, memory, and reason.  There is no possible fear of the return of any of the symptoms, unless you come again in contact with the poison; hardly likely, as it attacked you in Central Africa.  Of course, as I say, we shall never know precisely what the poison was.”

Then Ronnie spoke, suddenly.  “It was the Upas tree,” he said.  “I camped near it.  My nightmares began that night.  I never felt well, from that hour.”

“Rubbish!” said Dr. Dick.  “More likely a poisonous swamp.  The Upas tree is a myth.”

“Not at all,” insisted Ronnie.  “It is a horrid reality.  I had seen the one in Kew Gardens.  I recognised it directly, yet I camped in its shadow.  Dick, do you know what the Upas stands for?”

“What?”

“Selfishness!  It stands for any one who is utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish.”

“Oh, buck up old man!” cried Dick.  “We are all selfish—­every mother’s son of us!  Perhaps that’s why!  Most men’s mothers spoil them, and their wives continue the process.  But you will be selfish with a vengeance, if you don’t buck up and give that splendid wife of yours a good time now.  She has been through—­such a lot.  Ronnie, you will never quite realise—­well, I never knew such a woman, excepting, perhaps, Mrs. Dalmain; and of course she has not your wife’s beauty.  I haven’t the smallest intention of ever coming under the yoke myself.  But I assure you, old chap, if you had pegged out, as you once or twice seemed likely to do, I should have had a jolly good try as to whether I couldn’t chip in, by-and-by.”