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Rh "Well," I replied.

"It's fine to have you back home! Say!" he broke off boyishly, "does it really look like that?" And he held up the magazine, revealing a half-page picture of a tropical river—palm-shaded, vine-entangled, its banks a chaos of ferns, moss, and rotting tree trunks, and in the foreground a half-naked native, shining as if oiled.

"A good deal," I conceded. "But, you know, you have to see the coloring, and feel the heat, and smell the queer hot odor of pungent moss and decaying trees to get the real impression."

Burr sighed. "I know. I know. It's been so long I've nearly forgotten. I don't suppose I'll ever travel much now, Nan. I shall be forty-five next month."

"Are you very disappointed, Burr?" I asked gently.

He smiled vaguely and shook his head. "Well, to tell the truth, I've been so busy, all along, it is only occasionally I have had time to think about being disappointed."

"Like the game you played with the broken rib, I suppose," I took up. "You didn't have time to consider the pain in your chest. You were so intent on winning."

"Same old Nan!" Burr laughed.

I went right on, in spite of him. "It was that