Page:Herbert Jenkins - Patricia Brent Spinster.djvu/302

 front of her, each intent upon something that seemed of vital importance? Were they?"

"I doubt if Cassandra could have looked more gloomily prophetic."

She turned with a start and saw Geoffrey Elton smiling down upon her.

"Did I look as bad as that?" she enquired, as he took a seat beside her.

"You looked as if you were gratuitously settling the destinies of the world," he replied.

"In a way I suppose I was," she said musingly. "You see they all mean something," indicating the paraders with a nod of her head, "tragedy, comedy, farce, sometimes all three. If you only stop to think about life, it all seems so hopeless. I feel sometimes that I could run away from it all."

"That in the Middle Ages would have been diagnosed as the monastic spirit," said Elton. "It arose, and no doubt continues in most cases to arise from a sluggish liver."

"How dreadful!" laughed Patricia. "The inference is obvious."

"The world's greatest achievements and greatest tragedies could no doubt be traced directly to rebellious livers: Waterloo and 'Hamlet' are instances."

"Are you serious?" enquired Patricia. She was never quite certain of Elton.

"In a way I suppose I am," he replied. "If I were a pathologist I should write a book upon