him I was suffering from insomnia.  After raking over my grandfathers again and bringing the family history down by stages to the very moment I was shown into his office he said he should have to ask me to undergo a thorough physical—!  But I was tired of being slapped and punched and breathed on and prodded, and was bold enough to refuse point-blank.  I’d rather have the insomnia!  We worked up quite a fuss about it, for there was something tenacious in the fellow, for all his mild, kind, gentle ways; and I had all I could do to get off by pleading press of business.  But I wasn’t to escape scot-free.  Medical science had to get even somehow.  He compromised by stinging my eye out with belladonna.  Have you ever had belladonna squirted in your eye?  Well, don’t!

He was sitting at the table, writing out some cabalistic wiggles that stood for bromide of potassium, when I remarked casually that it was strange how well I could always sleep in Colorado.

He laid down the pen with a sigh.

“A wonderful state—­Colorado,” I observed.

“To me it’s the land of memories,” he said.  “Sad, beautiful, irrevocable memories—­try tea for breakfast—­do you read Browning?  Then you will remember that line:  ‘Oh, if I—­’ And I insist on your giving up that cocktail before dinner.”

“Some very dear friends of mine were once in Colorado,” I said.  “Morristown people—­the Van Coorts.”

“The Van Coorts!”

Doctor Jones sprang from his chair, his thin, handsome face flushing with excitement.

“Do you mean to say that you know Eleanor Van Coort?” he gasped.

“All my life.”

He dropped back into the chair again and mumbled something about cigars.  I was only to have blank a day.  In his perturbation I believe he limited me to a daily box.  He was trying—­and trying very badly—­to conceal the emotions I had conjured up.

“They were talking about you only yesterday,” I went on.  “That is, if it was you!  A Pullman drawing-room-”

“And a mistake about the tickets,” he broke out.  “Yes, yes, it’s they all right.  Talking about me, did you say?  Did Eleanor—­I mean, did Miss Van Coort—­express—?”

“She was wondering how she could find you,” I said.  “You see, they’re busy getting up a house-party and she was running over her men.  ‘If I only knew where that dear Doctor Jones was,’ she said, and then asked me, if by any possible chance—­”

His fine blue eyes were glistening with all sorts of tender thoughts.  It was really touching.  And I was in love myself, you know.

“So she has remained unmarried!” he exclaimed softly.  “Unmarried—­after all these years!”

“She’s a very popular girl,” I said.  “She’s had dozens of men at her feet—­but an unfortunate attachment, something that seems to go back to about three years ago, has apparently determined her to stay out of the game!”