orrible ear-trumpets the first time he meets a girl whom he has not
seen for years, and who used to like him so much, and who likes him
still in spite of his cruel stupidity. I wonder why you thought I wanted
to see you the minute I got home? I am awfully disappointed in you, for
I did think you would talk to me in a very different way the first time
you saw me. And now I am going to tell you something--and I would rather
cut my tongue out than say it in English, but it gives me a wicked
delight to say it in Burmese: I love you, John Howard. I have loved you
for a long time; and that is the reason I went to Burma; and now that I
have come back I am obliged to say that I love you still. If you could
invent some sort of a tube that would make you see better with your eyes
and understand better with your mind, it would be a great deal more
suitable than this horrid, snake-like thing for your ear. I do not
suppose you will ever hear me speak this way in English, but I tell you
again, John Howard, that I love you, and it makes me sick to think what
a goose you are.'

"'Now, then,' she said, putting down the tube, 'was there anything
peculiar in the tones and chords of that bit of foreign language?'

"Fortunately the only light in the room was behind me, and therefore
I had reason to hope that she did not observe the expression of my
countenance. Moreover, as soon as she had finished speaking she had
turned her face away from me, and was now leaning back in her chair,
her mouth tightly shut and her wide-open eyes directed on the opposite
wall. She looked like a woman who had taken a peculiar revenge, and
who, in the taking of it, had aroused her soul in its utmost recesses.

"For some moments I did not answer her question. In fact, I could not
speak at all. My thoughts were in a mad whirl. Not only had I discovered
that my invention, the hope of my life, was an absolute success, but I
was most powerfully impressed by the conviction that now I could never
tell Mary what my invention was intended to do, for then she would know
what it had done.

"'Yes,' I answered, speaking slowly; 'there was a sort of accord, a kind
of--'

"I was interrupted in what would have been a very labored sentence by
the ringing of the door-bell. Mary instantly rose. It was plain she was
laboring under suppressed excitement, for there was no other reason why
she should have jumped up in that way. She looked as if she were anxious
to see some one,