Late that afternoon we halted beside a tiny lake, deep in the unknown
wilderness, where purple and scarlet bergamot choked the shores and
the spruce-partridge strutted fearlessly under our very feet. Here we
pitched our two tents. The afternoon sun slanted through the pines;
the lake glittered; acres of golden brake perfumed the forest silence,
broken only at rare intervals by the distant thunder of a partridge
drumming.

Professor Smawl ate heavily and retired to her tent to lie torpid
until evening. William drove the unloaded mules into an intervale full
of sun-cured, fragrant grasses; I sat down beside Professor Van
Twiller.

The wilderness is electric. Once within the influence of its currents,
human beings become positively or negatively charged, violently
attracting or repelling each other.

"There is something the matter with this air," said Professor Van
Twiller. "It makes me feel as though I were desperately enamoured of
the entire human race."

She leaned back against a pine, smiling vaguely, and crossing one knee
over the other.

Now I am not bold by temperament, and, normally, I fear ladies.
Therefore it surprised me to hear myself begin a frivolous _causerie_,
replying to her pretty epigrams with epigrams of my own, advancing to
the borderland of badinage, fearlessly conducting her and myself over
that delicate frontier to meet upon the terrain of undisguised