n.

"Lady Yva," I said, "did I rightly understand the Lord Oro to say that
he was a thousand years old?"

"Yes, O Humphrey, and really he is more, or so I think."

"Then are you a thousand years old also?" I asked, aghast.

"No, no," she replied, shaking her head, "I am young, quite young, for I
do not count my time of sleep."

"Certainly you look it," I said. "But what, Lady Yva, do you mean by
young?"

She answered my question by another.

"What age are your women when they are as I am?"

"None of our women were ever quite like you, Lady Yva. Yet, say from
twenty-five to thirty years of age."

"Ah! I have been counting and now I remember. When my father sent me to
sleep I was twenty-seven years old. No, I will not deceive you, I was
twenty-seven years and three moons." Then, saying something to the
effect that she would return, she departed, laughing a little in a
mischievous way, and, although I did not observe this till afterwards,
Tommy departed with her.

When I repeated what she had said to Bastin and Bickley, who were
standing at a distance straining their ears and somewhat aggrieved, the
former remarked:

"If she is twenty-seven her father must have married late in life,
though of course it may have been a long while before he had children."

Then Bickley, who had been suppressing himself all this while, went off
like a bomb.

"Do you tell us, Bastin," he asked, "that you believe one word of
all this ghastly rubbish? I mean as to that antique charlatan being a
thousand years old and having caused the Flood and the rest?"

"If you ask me, Bickley, I see no particular reason to doubt it at
present. A person who can go to sleep in a glass coffin kept warm by
a pocketful of radium together with very accurate maps of the
constellations at the time he wakes up, can, I imagine, do most things."

"Even cause the Deluge," jeered Bickley.

"I don't know about the Deluge, but perhaps he may have been permitted
to cause a deluge. Why not? You can't look at things from far enough
off, Bickley. And if something seems big to you, you conclude that
therefore it is impossible. The same Power which gives you skill to
succeed in an operation, that hitherto was held impracticable, as I know
you have done once or twice, may have given that old fellow power to
cause a deluge. You should measure the universe and its possibilities by
worlds and not by acres, Bickley."

"And believe, I suppose, that a man can live