ot dare tell him that
I had asked you to come out here. It was entirely my own idea. I felt
that I _must_ write you because I am positive that what is happening in
this wilderness is of vital scientific importance."

"How did you get a letter out of this distant and desolate place?" I
asked.

"Every two months the storekeeper at Windflower Station sends in a man
and a string of mules with staples for us. The man takes our further
orders and our letters back to civilization."

I nodded.

"He took my letter to you--among one or two others I sent----"

A charming colour came into her cheeks. She was really extremely pretty.
I liked that girl. When a girl blushes when she speaks to a man he
immediately accepts her heightened colour as a personal tribute. This
is not vanity: it is merely a proper sense of personal worthiness.

She said thoughtfully:

"The mail bag which that man brought to us last week contained a letter
which, had I received it earlier, would have made my invitation to you
unnecessary. I'm sorry I disturbed you."

"_I_ am not," said I, looking into her beautiful eyes.

I twisted my mustache into two attractive points, shot my cuffs, and
glanced at her again, receptively.

She had a far-away expression in her eyes. I straightened my necktie. A
man, without being vain, ought to be conscious of his own worth.

"And now," she continued, "I am going to tell you the various reasons why
I asked so celebrated a scientist as yourself to come here."

I thanked her for her encomium.

"Ever since my father retired from Boston to purchase this hill and the
wilderness surrounding it," she went on, "ever since he came here to live
a hermit's life--a life devoted solely to painting landscapes--I also
have lived here all alone with him.

"That is three years, now. And from the very beginning--from the very
first day of our arrival, somehow or other I was conscious that there
was something abnormal about this corner of the world."

She bent forward, lowering her voice a trifle:

"Have you noticed," she asked, "that so many things seem to be _circular_
out here?"

"Circular?" I repeated, surprised.

"Yes. That crater is circular; so is the bottom of it; so is this
plateau, and the hill; and the forests surrounding us; and the mountain
ranges on the horizon."

"But all this is natural."

"Perhaps. But in those woods, down there, there are, here and there,
great circles of crumbling soil--_perfect_ cir