Publisher's Synopsis
When Professor Linyard came back from his holiday in the Maine woods the air ofrejuvenation he brought with him was due less to the influences of the climate than to thecompanionship he had enjoyed on his travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appearedto set out alone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied him, and if his heart beat highit was simply at the pitch of his adventure: for the Professor had eloped with an idea.No one who has not tried the experiment can divine its exhilaration. Professor Linyard wouldnot have changed places with any hero of romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. Themost fascinating female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up a gooddeal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into the future; whereas an idea canaccommodate itself to a single molecule of the brain or expand to the circumference of thehorizon. The Professor's companion had to the utmost this quality of adaptability. As the expresstrain whirled him away from the somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs. Linyard's affections, his ideaseemed to be sitting opposite him, and their eyes met every moment or two in a glance of joyouscomplicity; yet when a friend of the family presently joined him and began to talk about collegematters, the idea slipped out of sight in a flash, and the Professor would have had no difficulty inproving that he was alone.But if, from the outset, he found his idea the most agreeable of fellow-travellers, it was onlyin the aromatic solitude of the woods that he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There, during the long cool August days, lying full length on the pine-needles and gazing up into thesky, he would meet the eyes of his companion bending over him like a nearer heaven. And whateyes they were!-clear yet unfathomable, bubbling with inexhaustible laughter, yet drawing theirfreshness and sparkle from the central depths of thought! To a man who for twenty years hadfaced an eye reflecting the obvious with perfect accuracy, these escapes into the inscrutable hadalways been peculiarly inviting; but hitherto the Professor's mental infidelities had beenrestricted by an unbroken and relentless domesticity. Now, for the first time since his marriage, chance had given him six weeks to himself, and he was coming home with his lungs full oflibert