For a year he had been slowly going to pieces; for a year he had been dropping in for Dempsy to patch him up. There had been a host of miserable puny ailments which in themselves meant nothing, but combined and in a young man meant a great deal. Of late his memory had failed him outrageously; he had had frequent attacks of vertigo, and these of themselves had rendered him unreliable and unfit for newspaper work. Irresponsible! Unfit! Peter snorted the words out honestly to himself. Under these conditions, and with no one to care, he could see no plausible reason for trying to coax a mere existence out of life.
To those who knew him best--to Doctor Dempsy most of all--his condition seemed unexplainable. Here was a man who never drank, who never overfed, who smoked in moderation, whose life stood out conspicuously decent and clean against the possibilities of his environment. What lay back of this going to pieces? Doctor Dempsy had tried for a year to find out and had failed. To Peter, it was not unexplainable at all--he knew. Possessed of a constitution above the average, he had forced it to do the work of a mind far above the average, while he had denied it one of the three necessities of life and sanity. His will and reason had been powerless to help him--and now?
Because he had hated himself for hiding this knowledge from the man who had tried to do so much for him and wanted to make amends in some way--and because it was the easiest thing, after all, to agree--he let Doctor Dempsy pick out a sanitarium, make all arrangements, buy his ticket, and see him off. He drew the line at being personally conducted, however. Whether he went to a sanitarium or not did not matter; what mattered was how long would he stay and where would he go afterward. Or would there be an afterward? These were the questions that mulled through Peter's mind on the train, and, coupled with the memory of the worried kindliness on Doctor Dempsy's face, they were the only traveling companions Peter had. It was not to be wondered, therefore, that as he left the car and boarded the sanitarium omnibus he felt indescribably old, weary, and finished with things.
At first he thought he was the only passenger, but as the driver leisurely gathered up his reins and gave a cluck to the horses a girl's voice rang out from the station, "Flanders--Flanders! Why, I believe you're forgetting me." And the next instant the girl herself appeared, suitcase in hand.