s of no use. In
a little while he found it quite as useless to attempt telling her
anything. The simplest way, apparently, was silently and patiently to
endure while she talked--and talked--and talked.

Memories of her monologues, if they could have been taken in shorthand
from Galusha's mind, would have been merely a succession of "I" and
"I" and "I" and "Oh, do you really think so, Doctor Bangs?" and "Oh,
Professor!" and "wonderful" and "amazing" and "quite thrilling" and much
more of the same.

She followed him when he went to walk; that is, apparently she did, for
he was continually encountering her. She came and sat next him on the
hotel veranda. She bowed and smiled to him when she swept into the
dining room at meal times. Worst of all, she told others, many others,
who he was, and he was aware of being stared at, a knowledge which made
him acutely self-conscious and correspondingly miserable. There was a
Mr. Worth Buckley trotting in her wake, but he was mild and inoffensive.
His wife, however--Galusha exclaimed, "Oh, dear me!" inwardly or aloud
whenever he thought of her.

And she WOULD talk of Egypt. She and her husband had visited Cairo once
upon a time, so she felt herself as familiar with the whole Nile basin
as with the goldfish tank in the hotel lounge. To Galusha Egypt was an
enchanted land, a sort of paradise to which fortunate explorers might
eventually be permitted to go if they were very, very good. To have
this sacrilegious female patting the Sphinx on the head was more than he
could stand.

So he determined to stand it no longer; he ran away. One evening Mrs.
Buckley informed him that she and a little group--"a really select
group, Professor Bangs"--of the hotel inmates were to picnic somewhere
or other the following day. "And you are to come with us, Doctor,
and tell us about those wonderful temples you and I were discussing
yesterday. I have told the others something of what you told me and they
are quite WILD to hear you."

Galusha was quite wild also. He went to his room and, pawing amid the
chaos of his bureau drawer for a clean collar, chanced upon the postcard
from Mrs. Hall. The postcard reminded him of the advertisement of the
Restabit Inn, which was in his pocketbook. Then the idea came to him.
He would go to the Hall cottage and make a visit of a day or two. If he
liked the Cape and Wellmouth he would take lodgings at the Restabit
Inn and stay as long as he wished. The suspicion tha