“Why, don’t you remember Mona told us the water and atmosphere had all run down there, making it the only habitable part of the decaying globe?” “Oh, that’s only one of your scientific notions, probably as true as the others that we have disproved. Too much science has turned your head, and I will prove it to you again by showing you how impossible is the part which I play in your romance. I will tell you now, what you doubtless do not know, that I am engaged to be married to the best woman in all the earth, excepting your own good wife, of course.” “Is that a fact?” asked the doctor. “And do you love her?” “To be sure I do. I love her very dearly, and if I ever see her again I shall tell her so in a manner to make her understand it.” “Why, doesn’t she understand it now?” “Yes, I think so, but she thought I didn’t show heart enough in my wooing.” “Well, if she could see you with Mona she would learn that you have plenty of heart when the right one appears to make it spring into life.” “You speak as if you thought I did not love Margaret. You do not know her. Why, I wouldn’t once look at another woman anywhere, not even in Mars, and most certainly not in that puckered-up old world that we have just left, happily for us.” “Do you know what I think about you?” asked the doctor. “No.” “I think you have an exceedingly poor memory. First, you forgot Margaret as soon as the voice of that fair singer fell on your ear, and now you have forgotten the singer again the moment we have lost her. I await with much interest your first introduction to a daughter of Mars.” “You will be disappointed,” said I, “if you think I shall be more than civil to her.” “If she be handsome and can turn a tune moderately well, I shall be willing to wager a fair young planet against the moon that you will propose to her in a week.” “I have done nothing to give you so poor an opinion of me. It is only your own diseased imagination, and I do not seem to be curing it very fast. I suppose, because your mind is naturally so strong, it is the more difficult to destroy such an hallucination as has taken possession of you.” “I would give it up,” said the doctor. “The story is all true, and not a work of my imagination. Isn’t it more reasonable to believe that you could forget the circumstances I have related than that I could invent such a tale?” “Oh, I never could forget it if I had been false to Margaret. You do not know me. If your vagaries had taken any other direction I might possibly be brought to think you were right.”