“Good morning, Mr. Barker, I am so glad you have come,” said she, graciously extending her hand in the cordial Transatlantic fashion.

“Permit me to present my friend, Professor Claudius,” said Barker.  Claudius bowed very low.  The plunge was over, and he recovered his outward calm, whatever he might feel.

“Mr. Barker flatters me, Madam,” he said quietly.  “I am not a professor, but only a private lecturer.”

“I am too far removed from anything learned to make such distinctions,” said the Countess.  “But since good fortune has brought you into the circle of my ignorance, let me renew my thanks for the service you did me in Heidelberg the other day.”

Claudius bowed and murmured something inaudible.

“Or had you not realised that I was the heroine of the parasol at the broken tower?” asked Margaret smiling, as she seated herself in a low chair and motioned to her guests to follow her example.  Barker selected a comfortable seat, and arranged the cushion to suit him before he subsided into repose, but the Doctor laid hands on a stern and solid-looking piece of carving, and sat upright facing the Countess.

“Pardon me,” said he, “I had.  But it is always startling to realise a dream.”  The Countess looked at Claudius rather inquiringly; perhaps she had not expected he was the sort of man to begin an acquaintance by making compliments.  However, she said nothing, and he continued, “Do you not always find it so?”

“The bearded hermit is no duffer,” thought Mr. Barker.  “He will say grace over the whole barrel of pork.”

“Ah!  I have few dreams,” replied the Countess, “and when I do have any, I never realise them.  I am a very matter-of-fact person.”

“What matters the fact when you are the person, Madam?” retorted Claudius, fencing for a discussion of some kind.

“Immense,” thought Mr. Barker, changing one leg over the other and becoming interested.

“Does that mean anything, or is it only a pretty paradox?” asked the lady, observing that Claudius had thrown himself boldly into a crucial position.  Upon his answer would probably depend her opinion of him as being either intelligent or banal It is an easy matter to frame paradoxical questions implying a compliment, but it is no light task to be obliged to answer them oneself.  Claudius was not thinking of producing an effect, for the fascination of the dark woman was upon him, and the low, strange voice bewitched him, so he said what came uppermost.

“Yes,” said he, “there are persons whose lives may indeed be matters of fact to themselves—­who shall say?—­but who are always dreams in the lives of others.”

“Charming,” laughed the Countess, “do you always talk like that, Professor Claudius?”

“I have always thought,” Mr. Barker remarked in his high-set voice, “that I would like to be the dream of somebody’s life.  But somehow things have gone against me.”