The perplexed expression of the blond-haired man intensified. It is vain to deny that he enlarged the scope of his inquiry, 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." "No world could be more out of order----" "You play at that and have your fun. But there's no limit to the extent to which a world of men may get out of gear. In our world----" He nodded, but his eye had ceased to be friendly. "Men die of starvation; people die by the hundred thousand needlessly and painfully; men and women are lashed together to make hell for each other; children are born--abominably, and reared in cruelty and folly; there is a thing called war, a horror of blood and vileness. The whole thing seems to me at times a cruel and wasteful wilderness of muddle. You in this decent world have no means of understanding----" "No?" he said, and would have begun, but I went on too quickly. "No! When I see you dandering through this excellent and hopeful world, objecting, obstructing, and breaking the law, displaying your wit on science and order, on the men who toil so ingloriously to swell and use the knowledge that is salvation, this salvation for which _our_ poor world cries to heaven----" "You don't mean to say," he said, "that you really come from some other world where things are different and worse?" "I do." "And you want to talk to me about it instead of listening to me?" "Yes." "Oh, nonsense!" he said abruptly. "You can't do it--really. I can assure you this present world touches the nadir of imbecility. You and your friend, with his love for the lady who's so mysteriously tied--you're romancing! People could not possibly do such things. It's--if you'll excuse me--ridiculous. _He_ began--he would begin. A most tiresome story--simply bore me down. We'd been talking very agreeably before that, or rather I had, about the absurdity of marriage laws, the interference with a free and natural life, and so on, and suddenly he burst like a dam. No!" He paused. "It's really impossible. You behave perfectly well for a time, and then you begin to interrupt.... And such a childish story, too!"