“I thought you were a conservative, and disapproved of modern innovations,” you suggested archly. “With innovators, yes.” “Then the Levantine does not entirely disapprove of our Hesperian city?” “My knowledge of New York is about as deep,” I answered, smiling, “as my Eastern blood.” “Only skin-deep,” you said. “Just sufficient for a disguise.” “As long as you are silent, yes.” “Is my English so unmistakable?” “Not your tongue, but your thought. Of course your vicinage, costume, and complexion made me for a moment accept your joke of nationality, at that first meeting, but before you had uttered half your defense of the older races I felt sure that you were not a product of one of them.” “Why was that?” “Because it is only Christians who recognize and speak for the rights of other peoples.” “You forget that the religion of Buddha is toleration. We Christians preach the doctrine, but practice extermination, forgiving our enemies after killing them,” I corrected. “I do not think we differ much in works from even El Mahdi.” “Would El Mahdi ever have spoken for other races?” “You know the weak spot in my armor, Miss Walton,” I was obliged to confess. “That is due to you, Dr. Hartzmann. What you stated that night interested me so deeply that I have been reading up about the Eastern races and problems. I wonder if you have seen this new book of travel, The Debatable Lands between the East and West?” “Yes,” I assented, thinking that twenty over-lookings of it in manuscript and proof entitled me to make the claim. “You will be amused to hear that, when reading it, I thought of you as the probable writer, not merely because it begins in the Altai range and ends at Tangier, but as well because some of the ideas resemble yours. Mr. Whitely, however, tells me he has private information that Professor Humzel is the author. Do you know him?” “He was my professor of history at Leipzig.” “That accounts for the agreement in thought. You admire the book?” “I think it is a conscientious attempt to describe what the author saw.” “Ah, it is much more than that!” you exclaimed. “At a dinner in London, this autumn, I sat next the Earl—— next a member of the Indian Council, and he told me he considered it a far more brilliant book than Kinglake’s Eothen.” I knew I had no right to continue this subject, but I could not help asking, “You liked it?” “Very much. It seems to me a deep and philosophic study of present and future problems, besides being a vivid picture of most interesting countries and peoples. It made me long to be a nomad myself, and wander as the author did. The thought of three years of such life, of such freedom, seems to stir in me all the inherited tendency to prowl that we women supposedly get from Mother Sphinx.” “Civilization steals nature from us and compounds the theft with art.”