BIGELOW--[Is talking with a comically worried but earnest air.] Do you know, I'm getting so I'm actually afraid to leave them alone with that governess. She's too romantic. I'll wager she's got a whole book full of ghost stories, superstitions, and yellow-journal horrors up her sleeve. MARTHA--Oh, pooh! Don't go milling around for trouble. When I was a kid I used to get fun out of my horrors. BIGELOW--But I imagine you were more courageous than most of us. MARTHA--Why? BIGELOW--Well, Nevada--the Far West at that time--I should think a child would have grown so accustomed to violent scenes-- MARTHA--[Smiling.] Oh, in the mining camps; but you don't suppose my father lugged me along on his prospecting trips, do you? Why, I never saw any rough scenes until I'd finished with school and went to live with father in Goldfield. BIGELOW--[Smiling.] And then you met Curt. MARTHA--Yes--but I didn't mean he was a rough scene. He was very mild even in those days. Do tell me what he was like at Cornell. BIGELOW--A romanticist--and he still is! MARTHA--[Pointing at CURTIS with gay mischief.] What! That sedate man! Never! CURTIS--[Looking up and smiling at them both affectionately--lazily.] Don't mind him, Martha. He always was crazy. BIGELOW--[To CURT--accusingly.] Why did you elect to take up mining engineering at Cornell instead of a classical degree at the Yale of your fathers and brothers? Because you had been reading Bret Harte in prep. school and mistaken him for a modern realist. You devoted four years to grooming yourself for another outcast of Poker Flat. [MARTHA laughs.] CURTIS--[Grinning.] It was you who were hypnotized by Harte--so much so that his West of the past is still your blinded New England-movie idea of the West at present. But go on. What next? BIGELOW--Next? You get a job as engineer in that Goldfield mine--but you are soon disillusioned by a laborious life where six-shooters are as rare as nuggets. You try prospecting. You find nothing but different varieties of pebbles. But it is necessary to your nature to project romance into these stones, so you go in strong for geology. As a geologist, you become a slave to the Romance of the Rocks. It is but a step from that to anthropology--the last romance of all. There you find yourself--because there is no further to go. You win fame as the most proficient of young skull-hunters--and wander over the face of the globe, digging up bones like an old dog. CURTIS--[With a laugh.] The man is mad, Martha. BIGELOW--Mad! What an accusation to come from one who is even now considering setting forth on a five-year excavating contest in search of the remains of our gibbering ancestor, the First Man! CURTIS--[With sudden seriousness.] I'm not considering it any longer. I've decided to go. MARTHA--[Starting--the hurt showing in her voice.] When did you decide?