and no need for wars. Will they live in palaces?
Will they all be healthy?... Machines will wait on them. No! I can't
imagine it. Perhaps I shall dream of it. My dreaming self may be
cleverer."

She held out her hand to Sir Richmond. Just for a moment they stood hand
in hand, appreciatively....

"Well!" said Dr. Martineau, as the door closed behind the two Americans,
"This is a curious encounter."

"That young woman has brains," said Sir Richmond, standing before the
fireplace. There was no doubt whatever which young woman he meant. But
Dr. Martineau grunted.

"I don't like the American type," the doctor pronounced judicially.

"I do," Sir Richmond countered.

The doctor thought for a moment or so. "You are committed to the project
of visiting Avebury?" he said.

"They ought to see Avebury," said Sir Richmond.

"H'm," said the doctor, ostentatiously amused by his thoughts and
staring at the fire. "Birth Control! I NEVER did."

Sir Richmond smiled down on the top of the doctor's head and said
nothing.

"I think," said the doctor and paused. "I shall leave this Avebury
expedition to you."

"We can be back in the early afternoon," said Sir Richmond. "To give
them a chance of seeing the cathedral. The chapter house here is not one
to miss...."

"And then I suppose we shall go on?

"As you please," said Sir Richmond insincerely.

"I must confess that four people make the car at any rate seem
tremendously overpopulated. And to tell the truth, I do not find this
encounter so amusing as you seem to do.... I shall not be sorry when we
have waved good-bye to those young ladies, and resume our interrupted
conversation."

Sir Richmond considered something mulish in the doctor's averted face.

"I find Miss Grammont an extremely interesting--and stimulating human
being.

"Evidently."

The doctor sighed, stood up and found himself delivering one of the
sentences he had engendered during his solitary meditations in his room
before dinner. He surprised himself by the plainness of his speech. "Let
me be frank," he said, regarding Sir Richmond squarely. "Considering
the general situation of things and your position, I do not care very
greatly for the part of an accessory to what may easily develop, as you
know very well, into a very serious flirtation. An absurd, mischievous,
irrelevant flirtation. You may not like the word. You may pretend it is
a conversation, an ordinary intellectual conversation. That is not