. I didn't think Professors had
time for that sort of thing."

"Neither did I till a few hours ago," he said, with a short laugh,
taking out a cigarette-case and offering it to her. She sat down rather
trustfully on a verandah rail Louis had carpentered. Andrew stared at
them both and made off silently towards the noise. "But how did you know
who I was?"

"I only know one other man in the world, you see, and he's an old doctor
in Scotland."

He was watching her as she spoke.

"I see," he said. "And you think you know me?"

"Yes. I know you like I know St. Paul and Siegfried and Parsifal--people
living in my mind all the time. I've talked to you for hours, you
know--hours and hours--"

"It was very good of you to ask me to come. But--embarrassing, you know!
I simply had to come, out of curiosity. To find someone reading one's
lectures right in the heart of the Bush!--"

"I thought you would come," she said, staring at him gravely, "when Dr.
Angus told me what you said about the socialization of knowledge. But I
can hardly believe it's you, even now. Yet somehow you look as if you
could think those last lectures of yours. Before I read those you seemed
tremendously clever and--and rousing. To speak biologically--"

"Oh, please!" he said, smiling. "They've been doing that in Sydney--out
of encyclopedias--!"

"I was going to say that your thoughts always fertilize my brain. But
you must be hungry, so I'll not tell you what I want to about the
lectures yet."

She slipped off the verandah rail and went indoors, leaving the
Professor rather amazed. He was not quite sure whether to think she was
a serious and dull young person, absolutely sincere and very much a
hero-worshipper, or one of the lionizing type he had met in the city. He
was deciding that she was too young for the latter role when she called
him inside the candle-lit room.

"I hope you drink tea. We drink quarts of it here."

He nodded reassuringly.

"There's some beer, too, but the shepherds and old Mike from Klondyke
will have to drink that. It was put into a kerosene tin that hadn't been
boiled and it smells terrible. But they won't notice."

"They'll probably be dead," he remarked.

"Mike drinks methylated spirit and the shepherds have a bottle of
squareface each on Sunday afternoons when Betty and Andrew and I look
after the sheep. Nothing hurts us. We're hard people out here."

"What made you write to me like that?" he asked, still puzzle