e of us
protest that we aim for higher things."

"I see," she said, musingly. As far as I could tell she was coming to
some decision. With an instinctive dislike to any such proceeding as
regarded myself, I tried to cut across her unknown thoughts.

"But, really--" I said, "I am quite a commonplace topic. Let us talk
about yourself. Where do you come from?"

It occurred to me again that I was intensely unacquainted with her type.
Here was the same smile--as far as I could see, exactly the same smile.
There are fine shades in smiles as in laughs, as in tones of voice. I
seemed unable to hold my tongue.

"Where do you come from?" I asked. "You must belong to one of the new
nations. You are a foreigner, I'll swear, because you have such a fine
contempt for us. You irritate me so that you might almost be a Prussian.
But it is obvious that you are of a new nation that is beginning to find
itself."

"Oh, we are to inherit the earth, if that is what you mean," she said.

"The phrase is comprehensive," I said. I was determined not to give
myself away. "Where in the world do you come from?" I repeated. The
question, I was quite conscious, would have sufficed, but in the hope,
I suppose, of establishing my intellectual superiority, I continued:

"You know, fair play's a jewel. Now I'm quite willing to give you
information as to myself. I have already told you the essentials--you
ought to tell me something. It would only be fair play."

"Why should there be any fair play?" she asked.

"What have you to say against that?" I said. "Do you not number it among
your national characteristics?"

"You really wish to know where I come from?"

I expressed light-hearted acquiescence.

"Listen," she said, and uttered some sounds. I felt a kind of unholy
emotion. It had come like a sudden, suddenly hushed, intense gust of
wind through a breathless day. "What--what!" I cried.

"I said I inhabit the Fourth Dimension."

I recovered my equanimity with the thought that I had been visited by
some stroke of an obscure and unimportant physical kind.

"I think we must have been climbing the hill too fast for me," I said,
"I have not been very well. I missed what you said." I was certainly
out of breath.

"I said I inhabit the Fourth Dimension," she repeated with admirable
gravity.

"Oh, come," I expostulated, "this is playing it rather low down. You
walk a convalescent out of breath and then propound riddles to him."

I was recov