ay smiled back with such intimate understanding that Lady Firth
glanced up inquiringly.

"Have you met Mrs. Adair already?" she asked.

"No," said Hemingway, "but I have been trying to meet her for thirty
years."

Perplexed, the Englishwoman frowned, and then, with delight at her own
perspicuity, laughed aloud.

"I know," she cried, "in your country you are what they call a
'hustler'! Is that right?" She waved them away. "Take Mrs. Adair over
there," she commanded, "and tell her all the news from home. Tell her
about the railroad accidents and 'washouts' and the latest thing in
lynching."

The young people stretched out in long wicker chairs in the shade of a
tree covered with purple flowers. On a perch at one side of them an
orang-outang in a steel belt was combing the whiskers of her infant
daughter; at their feet what looked like two chow puppies, but which
happened to be Lady Firth's pet lions, were chewing each other's
toothless gums; and in the immediate foreground the hospital nurses
were defying the sun at tennis while the Sultan's band played
selections from a Gaiety success of many years in the past. With these
surroundings it was difficult to talk of home. Nor on any later
occasions, except through inadvertence, did they talk of home.

For the reasons already stated, it amused Hemingway to volunteer no
confidences. On account of what that same evening Harris told him of
Mrs. Adair, he asked none.

Harris himself was a young man in no way inclined to withhold
confidences. He enjoyed giving out information. He enjoyed talking
about himself, his duties, the other consuls, the Zanzibaris, and his
native State of Iowa. So long as he was permitted to talk, the
listener could select the subject. But, combined with his loquacity,
Hemingway had found him kind-hearted, intelligent, observing, and the
call of a common country had got them quickly together.

Hemingway was quite conscious that the girl he had seen but once had
impressed him out of all proportion to what he knew of her. She seemed
too good to be true. And he tried to persuade himself that after eight
months in the hinterland among hippos and zebras any reasonably
attractive girl would have proved equally disturbing.

But he was not convinced. He did not wish to be convinced. He assured
himself that had he met Mrs. Adair at home among hundreds of others he
would have recognized her as a woman of exceptional character, as one
especial