CHAPTER VIII 



THE CONVALESCENCE OF A CRACKED HEART 



I HAVE tried to tell how I was frightened into 

 my vacation by a physical warning, and by the 

 Doctor who took it up and added to it. He 

 called it the disease of civilization, and said the 

 trouble was that it worked unseen at the centre, 

 so that you never suspected its ravages until you 

 collapsed suddenly. He held out a single plank 

 of rescue, and I ran over it with amazing alacrity 

 into the wild woods where I could escape from 

 civilization for a year. Fortunately for me, my 

 Doctor was a rational man, one of those rare doc 

 tors who do not weigh life in an apothecary s 

 scales, or insist that you can cut every domain of 

 it with a knife. He told me that my E string 

 was a little weak (the Doctor plays the violin, or 

 did in his younger days), and was screwed up too 

 tight. &quot; Of course,&quot; he said, &quot; it is going to snap 

 unless you let the rest of the instrument down to 

 a lower key. In a word, you must get out of the 

 orchestra.&quot; 



