“Oh, I’m so glad—glad, I mean,” she corrected herself hastily, “that you’re all right again now! And glad too that you’ve been ill, since that just confirms it—” Here the Professor fell. “Confirms what?” he snapped, and saw too late the trap into which he had plunged. “My belief that you are predestined to help me,” replied his neighbour with joyful conviction. “Oh, but that’s quite a mistake—a complete mistake. I never in my life helped anybody, in any way. I’ve always made it a rule not to.” “Not even a Russian refugee?” “Never!” “Oh, yes, you have. You’ve helped _me_!” The Professor turned an ireful glance upon her, and she nodded. “I am a Russian refugee.” “You?” he exclaimed. His eyes, by this time, had definitely escaped from his control, and were recording with an irrepressible activity and an exasperating precision the details of her appearance and her dress. Both were harmonious and opulent. He laughed incredulously. “Why do you laugh? Can’t you _see_ that I’m a refugee; by my clothes, I mean? Who has such pearls but Russian refugees? Or such sables? We have to have them—to sell, of course! You don’t care to buy my sables, do you? For you they would be only six thousand pounds cash. No, I thought not. It’s my duty to ask—but I didn’t suppose they would interest you. The Paris and London jewellers farm out the pearls to us; the big dressmakers supply the furs. For of course we’ve all sold the originals long ago. And really I’ve been rather successful. I placed two sets of silver fox and a rope of pearls last week at Monte Carlo. Ah, that fatal place! I gambled away the whole of my commission the same night.... But I’m forgetting to tell you how you’ve already helped me....” She paused to draw breath, and in the pause the Professor, who had kept his hand on his loosened ear-pad, slipped it back over his ear. “I wear these,” he said coldly, “to avoid argument.” With a flick she had it off again. “I wasn’t going to argue—I was only going to thank you.” “I can’t conceive for what. In any case, I don’t want to be thanked.” Her brows gathered resentfully. “Why did you _ask_ to be, then?” she snapped; and opening a bejewelled wrist-bag she drew forth from a smother of cigarette papers and pawn-tickets a slip of paper on which her astonished companion read a phrase written in a pointed feminine hand, but signed with his own name. “_There!_” The Professor took the paper and scanned it indignantly. “This copy of ‘The Elimination of Phenomena’ was presented by Professor Loring G. Hibbart of Purewater University, Clio, N. Y., to the library of the American Y. M. C. A. Refugee Centre at Odessa. “A word of appreciation, sent by any reader to the above address, would greatly gratify Loring G. Hibbart.”