She came upon him first one brilliant afternoon when he was sitting upon a rock, resting his weary legs--they wearied so easily nowadays--and looking off at the mountain-side ablaze with autumn coloring. She was large and commanding, and she spoke with a manner, a very decided manner. She asked him if--he would pardon her for asking, wouldn't he?--but had she, by any chance, the honor of addressing Doctor Bangs, the Egyptologist. Oh, really? How very wonderful! She was quite certain that it was he. She had heard him deliver a series of lectures--oh, the most WONDERFUL things, they were, really--at the museum some years before. She had been introduced to him at that time, but he had forgotten her, of course. Quite natural that he should. “You meet so many people, Doctor Bangs--or should I say 'Professor'?” He hoped she would say neither. He had an odd prejudice of his own against titles, and to be called “Mister” Bangs was the short road to his favor. He tried to tell this woman so, but it was of no use. In a little while he found it quite as useless to attempt telling her anything. The simplest way, apparently, was silently and patiently to endure while she talked--and talked--and talked. Memories of her monologues, if they could have been taken in shorthand from Galusha's mind, would have been merely a succession of “I” and “I” and “I” and “Oh, do you really think so, Doctor Bangs?” and “Oh, Professor!” and “wonderful” and “amazing” and “quite thrilling” and much more of the same. She followed him when he went to walk; that is, apparently she did, for he was continually encountering her. She came and sat next him on the hotel veranda. She bowed and smiled to him when she swept into the dining room at meal times. Worst of all, she told others, many others, who he was, and he was aware of being stared at, a knowledge which made him acutely self-conscious and correspondingly miserable. There was a Mr. Worth Buckley trotting in her wake, but he was mild and inoffensive. His wife, however--Galusha exclaimed, “Oh, dear me!” inwardly or aloud whenever he thought of her. And she WOULD talk of Egypt. She and her husband had visited Cairo once upon a time, so she felt herself as familiar with the whole Nile basin as with the goldfish tank in the hotel lounge. To Galusha Egypt was an enchanted land, a sort of paradise to which fortunate explorers might eventually be permitted to go if they were very, very good. To have this sacrilegious female patting the Sphinx on the head was more than he could stand. So he determined to stand it no longer; he ran away. One evening Mrs. Buckley informed him that she and a little group--“a really select group, Professor Bangs”--of the hotel inmates were to picnic somewhere or other the following day. “And you are to come with us, Doctor, and tell us about those wonderful temples you and I were discussing yesterday. I have told the others something of what you told me and they are quite WILD to hear you.”