certain that I didn't know THEN.
So I looked it up. It fits in with what you told Primmie and me about
travelin'--that camel driver creature and all--and yet--and yet, you
know, I was surprised."

"Surprised? Really? Yes, of course, but--but why?"

"Well, because somehow you don't look like that kind of man. I mean the
kind of man who travels in all sorts of wild places and does dangerous
things, you know, and--"

Galusha's desire to protest overcame his politeness. He broke in
hurriedly.

"Oh, but I'm not, you know," he cried. "I'm not really. Dear me, no!"

"But you said you had been to--to Africa, was it?--three or four times."

"Oh, but those were my Abyssinian trips. Abyssinia isn't wild, or
dangerous, any more than Egypt."

"Oh, isn't it?"

"No, not in the least, really. Oh, dear me, no!"

"Not with darky camel drivers stealin' your--er--underclothes and
goodness knows what? It sounds a little wild to ME."

"Oh, but it isn't, I assure you. And Egypt--ah--Egypt is a wonderful
country. On my most recent trip I.... May I tell you?"

He began to tell her without waiting for permission. For the next hour
Martha Phipps journeyed afar, under an African sun, over desert sands,
beside a river she had read of in her geography when a girl, under
palm trees, amid pyramids and temples and the buried cities of a buried
people. And before her skipped, figuratively speaking, the diminutive
figure of Galusha Bangs, guiding, pointing, declaiming, describing, the
incarnation of enthusiastic energy, as different as anything could be
from the mild, dreamy little person who had sat opposite her at the
supper table so short a time before.

The wooden clock on the mantel--it had wooden works and Martha wound it
each night before she went to bed--banged its gong ten times. Mr. Bangs
descended from Egypt as if he had fallen from a palm tree, alighting
upon reality and Cape Cod with startled suddenness.

"Oh, dear me!" he cried. "What was that? Goodness me, it CAN'T be
ten o'clock, can it? Oh, I must have talked you almost to death, Miss
Phipps. I must have bored you to distraction, I must really. Oh, I'm SO
sorry!"

Miss Martha also seemed to be coming out of a dream, or trance. She
stirred in her chair.

"You haven't bored me, Mr. Bangs," she said,

"Oh, but I must have, really. I should know better. You see.... Well,
it's quite extraordinary my talking to you in this way, isn't it? I
don't do it often--ah--except to