I was recalled from my meditations¹ by the hand of the blond-haired man upon my arm.

I looked up to discover the botanist² had gone into the inn.

The blond-haired man was for a moment almost stripped of pose.

“I say,” he said. “Weren’t you listening to me?”

“No,” I said bluntly.

His surprise was manifest. But by an effort he recalled what he had meant to say.

“Your friend,” he said, “has been telling me, in spite of my sustained interruptions, a most incredible story.”

I wondered how the botanist managed to get it in. “About that woman?” I said.

“About a man and a woman who hate each other and can’t get away from each other.”

“I know,” I said.

“It sounds absurd.”

“It is.”

“Why can’t they get away? What is there to keep them together? It’s ridiculous. I——”

“Quite.”

“He would tell it to me.”

“It’s his way.”

“He interrupted me. And there’s no point in it. Is he ——” he hesitated, “mad?”

“There’s a whole world of people mad with him,” I answered after a pause.

The perplexed⁴ expression of the blond-haired man intensified⁵. It is vain to deny that he enlarged the scope of his inquiry⁶, visibly if not verbally. “Dear me!” he said, and took up something he had nearly forgotten. “And you found yourselves suddenly on a mountain side? . . . I thought you were joking.”

I turned round upon him with a sudden access of earnestness. At least I meant my manner to be earnest, but to him it may have seemed wild.

“You,” I said, “are an original sort of man. Do not be alarmed. Perhaps you will understand. . . . We were not joking.”

“But, my dear fellow!”

“I mean it! We come from an inferior world! Like this, but out of order.”

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