mask whose round, staring goggles shone blankly in the warm white
light.

On her part, she seemed to recognize him instantaneously. On
his.... It may as well be admitted that Maitland's wits were gone
wool-gathering, temporarily at least: a state of mind not
unpardonable when it is taken into consideration that he was
called upon to grapple with and simultaneously to assimilate three
momentous facts. For the first time in his life he found himself
nose to nose with a revolver, and that one of able bodied and
respect-compelling proportions. For the first time in his life,
again, he was under necessity of dealing with a housebreaker. But
most stupefying of all he found the fact that this housebreaker,
this armed midnight marauder, was a woman! And so it was not
altogether fearlessness that made him to all intents and purposes
ignore the weapon; it is nothing to his credit for courage if his
eyes struck past the black and deadly mouth of the revolver and
looked only into the blank and expressionless eyes of the wind-mask;
it was not lack of respect for his skin's integrity, but the
sheer, tremendous wonder of it all, that rendered him oblivious to
the eternity that lay the other side of a slender, trembling
finger-tip.

And so he stared, agape, until presently the weapon wavered and
was lowered and the woman's voice, touched with irony, brought him
to his senses.

"Oh," she remarked coolly, "it's only you."

Thunderstruck, he was able no more than to parrot the pronoun: