"No! I can't find a reasonable cause yet."
"I haven't really begun…. The brain is a delicate instrument. It can do a good deal of work in its own way, if you don't abuse it—"
"Overwork it?" suggested Isabelle.
"I never knew an American woman who overworked her brain," he retorted impatiently. "I mean abuse it. It's grossly abused."
"Wrong ideas?"
"No ideas at all, in the proper sense,—it's stuffed with all sorts of things,—sensations, emotions…. Where are you living?"
"At the Metropole."
"And where were you last month?"
"In St. Louis."
"And the month before?"