Professor Hibbart was in truth a man of passionately excitable nature: no one was ever, by temperament, less adapted to the lofty intellectual labours in which his mind delighted. He asked only to live in the empyrean; but he was perpetually being dragged back to earth by the pity, wrath or contempt excited in him by the slipshod course of human affairs. There were only two objects on which he flattered himself he could always look with a perfectly unseeing eye; and these were a romantic landscape and a pretty woman. And he was not absolutely sure about the landscape. Suddenly a touch, soft yet peremptory, was laid on his arm. Looking down, he beheld a gloved hand; looking up he saw that the man opposite him was a woman. To this awkward discovery he was still prepared to oppose the blank wall of the most complete imperception. But a sharp pinch proved that the lady who had taken hold of his arm had done so with the fixed determination to attract his attention, at the cost of whatever pain or inconvenience to himself. As she appeared also to be saying something—probably asking if the next station were the one at which she ought to get out—he formed with soundless lips the word “Deaf,” and pointed to his ears. The lady’s reply was to release his wrist, and with her free hand flick off an ear-pad. “Deaf? Oh, no,” she said briskly, in fluent but exotic English. “You wouldn’t need ear-pads if you were. You don’t want to be bothered—that’s all. I know the trick; you got it out of Herbert Spencer!” The assault had nearly disabled the Professor for farther resistance; but he rallied his wits and answered stonily: “I have no time-table. You’d better consult the guard.” The lady threw her spent cigarette out of the window. As the smoke drifted away from her features he became uneasily aware that they were youthful, and that the muscles about her lips and eyes were contracted into what is currently known as a smile. In another moment, he realized with dismay, he was going to know what she looked like. He averted his eyes. “I don’t want to consult the guard—I want to consult _you_,” said the lady. His ears took reluctant note of an intonation at once gay and appealing, which caressed the “You” as if it were a new pronoun rich in vowels, and the only one of its kind in the world. “Eeee-you,” she repeated. He shook his averted head. “I don’t know the name of a single station on this line.” “Dear me, don’t you?” The idea seemed to shock her, to make a peculiar appeal to her sympathy. “But I do—every one of them! With my eyes shut. Listen: I’ll begin at the beginning. Paris—” “But I don’t _want_ to know them!” he almost screamed. “Well, neither do I. What I want is to ask you a favour—just one tiny little enormous favour.” The Professor still looked away. “I have been in very bad health until recently,” he volunteered.