“Oh, no, of course not,” she murmured; and as she spoke I noted that her upper lip trembled slightly, as though from extreme sensitiveness and sympathy. “Do you not know that it would be a pleasure to be of aid?” I was enchanted by this reply, for there could be no doubting the utter candor and sincerity in her earnest blue eyes, which were glowing with a softness equal to the magnetism they sometimes displayed. Encouraged to the point of boldness, I decided upon a daring step. “Before I ask any other question,” I ventured, “might it not be well for us to know each other’s names?” “Why, of course,” she agreed. “My name is Aelios.” “Aelios!” I repeated, charmed by the sound. “What a delightful name! And what is your other name, may I ask?” “My other name?” she echoed, astonished. “What other name do you mean?” I saw that somehow I had made a mistake. “Why, haven’t you another name?” I inquired, with distinct loss of confidence. “Another name?” She tittered delightedly, as though enjoying a rare joke. “Well, if that isn’t the most outlandish idea! What do you think I’d do with another name?” “Why, that--that’s not for me to say,” I stammered. “Only, where I come from, every one has at least two or three names.” “Oh, how perfectly ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Just as if we haven’t enough to remember one name apiece!” She paused momentarily, and I was too much embarrassed to resume the conversation. Fortunately, she continued without my aid. “How many names have you?” she inquired; and the playful light in her eyes told me that she could not have been more amused if asking how many hands or feet I had. “Only two,” I admitted, glad that I had not to confess to three or four. “I am called Anson Harkness.” “Anson Harkness,” she repeated, slowly, as if savoring the peculiar sound. “Why, if that isn’t the strangest name I ever heard!” “Where I come from it isn’t considered strange,” I assured her. “Of course, in my country everything is very different--” “Yes, I know,” she interposed. “You come from above the sea.” “How do you know?” I cried, astonished. Again she peered at me in surprise, and almost, I thought, with something of that puzzled air with which one regards a child who persists in asking the ridiculous. “Why, of course you must come from above the sea,” she explained. “Where else is there to come from?” “And do the people here all know we come from above the sea?” “Yes, indeed,” declared Aelios, a naïve seriousness replacing the frolicsome air of the moment before. “That’s what we’ve all been worrying about. We thought we were proof against invasions from above, and we simply can’t understand how you got here. Why, for three thousand years the upper world doesn’t seem even to have suspected our existence.” “Three thousand years?” I burst forth. “Three thousand years? Then, for God’s sake, how old is this land of yours? And, in heaven’s name, what country is this, anyway?”