"I might, perhaps,
find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved,
and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." I
spoke with emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly moist.

"It is too much to believe all this," she said, "but it is very
delightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was very
much distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks anything ought to
astonish us when it can be explained scientifically, as I suppose this
long sleep of yours can be, but even to fancy myself in your place
makes my head swim. I know that I could not have borne it at all."

"That would depend," I replied, "on whether an angel came to support
you with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition, as one came to
me." If my face at all expressed the feelings I had a right to have
toward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had played so angelic a
role toward me, its expression must have been very worshipful just
then. The expression or the words, or both together, caused her now to
drop her eyes with a charming blush.

"For the matter of that," I said, "if your experience has not been as
startling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming to see a man
belonging to a strange century, and apparently a hundred years dead,
raised to life."

"It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first," she said,
"but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and realize how
much stranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot our own feelings
a good deal, at least I know I did. It seemed then not so much
astounding as interesting and touching beyond anything ever heard of
before."

"But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table with me,
seeing who I am?"

"You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as we must to
you," she answered. "We belong to a future of which you could not form
an idea, a generation of which you knew nothing until you saw us. But
you belong to a generation of which our forefathers were a part. We
know all about it; the names of many of its members are household
words with us. We have made a study of your ways of living and
thinking; nothing you say or do surprises us, while we say and do
nothing which does not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. West, that
if you feel that you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must not
be surprised that from the first we have scarcely found you strange at
all."

"I had not thought of it