“Most of them look worried,” suggested Mr. Blodgett, “only because they are afraid they’ll take more than three minutes to eat their lunch.” For a moment you spoke with Mr. Blodgett on business, and then offered me your hand in farewell, saying, “I am very glad, Dr. Hartzmann, for this chance reunion. Mr. Blodgett and I have often spoken of the mysterious Oriental who fell in—and out—of our knowledge so strangely.” “I have wished to meet you, Miss Walton,” I responded warmly, “to thank you for your kindness and help to me when”— “That was nothing, Dr. Hartzmann,” you interrupted, in evident deprecation of my thanks. “Indeed, I have always felt that we were in a measure responsible for your accident, and that we made but a poor return by the little we did. Good-morning.” Mr. Blodgett took you to your carriage, and when he returned he gave a whistle. “Well!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t gone through such a ten-second scare since I proposed to my superior moiety.” “I ought”—I began. But he went on: “There’s nothing frightens me so much as a wrought-up woman. Dynamite or volcanoes aren’t a circumstance to her, because they have limits; but woman!” I laughed and said, “The Hindoos have a paradox to the effect that women fear mice, mice fear men, and men fear women.” “She got so much better and longer look at you in Tangier than I did that I don’t wonder she recognized Dr. Hartzmann when I didn’t. But why did she stop there in her recollections?” “It appeared incomprehensible to me for a moment, yet, as a fact, her knowing me as Donald Maitland would have been the greater marvel of the two. When she knew me, I was an undersized, pallid, stooping lad of seventeen. In the ten years since, my hair and skin have both darkened greatly, I have grown a mustache, and my voice has undergone the change that comes with manhood, as well as that which comes by speaking foreign tongues. Your very question as to whether I was of Eastern birth tells the whole story, for such a doubt would seem absurd to one who remembered the boy of ten years ago. Then, too, Miss Walton, having recognized me as Dr. Hartzmann, was, as it were, disarmed of all suspicion by having no question-mark in her mind as to my exact identity.” Mr. Blodgett nodded his head in assent. “And you don’t know it all,” he informed me. “I’m going to be frank, doctor, and acknowledge that I’ve expressed a pretty low opinion of you to her more than once. If Maizie were asked what man in this world she’d be least likely to meet in my office on a friendly footing, she would probably think of you. Your presence here was equivalent to saying that you weren’t Donald Maitland, let alone the fact that I greeted you as Dr. Hartzmann, and that she could never dream of my having a reason to deceive her in your identity.” “Such a chain of circumstances almost makes one believe in kismet,” I sighed. Then I laughed, and added, “How easy it is to show that one need not be scared—after the danger is all over!”