Really, if this continues, Mr.Linford, I shall be obliged--" "A case of it--of this blankness of mine.

Instead of continuing my early prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey you coldly for the first time.

You know I'm afraid to look at print for fear I've forgotten how to read." "Nonsense!" "No--I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G.

Wells's stories--a gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you--bland, agreeable, scholarly--with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one's secretest bones is held to betoken the only beauty--you understand _that ?_--Well, I come here, and everything is different--ideals of beauty, people absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example--numbers, language, institutions, everything.

Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's." "Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not--" "Also, why I could see that you _are_--that's it, smile! Nance, you _are_ a dear, when you smile--you make a man feel so strong and protecting.