Of course there was nothing we could talk of but the strange experience by virtue of which I was there, but they talked of it with an interest so naive and direct in its expression as to relieve the subject to a great degree of the element of the weird and the uncanny which might so easily have been overpowering.

One would have supposed that they were quite in the habit of entertaining waifs from another century, so perfect was their tact.
For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind to have been more alert and acute than that evening, or my intellectual sensibilities more keen.

Of course I do not mean that the consciousness of my amazing situation was for a moment out of mind, but its chief effect thus far was to produce a feverish elation, a sort of mental intoxication.[1] Edith Leete took little part in the conversation, but when several times the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her face, I found her eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity, almost like fascination.

It was evident that I had excited her interest to an extraordinary degree, as was not astonishing, supposing her to be a girl of imagination.

Though I supposed curiosity was the chief motive of her interest, it could but affect me as it would not have done had she been less beautiful.
Dr.Leete, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in my account of the circumstances under which I had gone to sleep in the underground chamber.