“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 puzzled.  “I still have no idea—­”

“I wanted to see you, for one thing.  But that’s only a small thing.  I can’t tell you now.  I’m the cook to-day, you see, and they’ll be wanting their supper in a little while.  I must go and find somewhere for you to sleep, too.  How long can you stay?”

“I’m not sure,” he said guardedly.  “I don’t want to embarrass you, however much you embarrass me.”

“I’d like you to stay for months,” she said simply.  “I—­we’re very lonely.”

The gramophone groaning out the “Merry Widow” waltz seemed to contradict her words, with its accompaniment of tramping feet, laughter and talk.  “This only happens on birthdays and things.  Even then, it’s lonely.”

“I don’t believe you’re any more lonely than I,” he said.