"At the Bennetts'. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," replied Orde.

They said little more until the Bennetts' gate was reached. Orde
declined to come in.

"Good-night," she said. "I want to thank you. You did not once act
as though you thought I was silly or crazy. And you didn't try, as
all the rest of them would, to act silly too. You couldn't have
done it; and you didn't try. Oh, you may have felt it--I know!"
She smiled one of her quaint and quizzical smiles. "But men aren't
built for foolishness. They have to leave that to us. You've been
very nice this afternoon; and it's helped a lot. I'm good for quite
a long stretch now. Good-night."

She nodded to him and left him tongue-tied by the gate.

Orde, however, walked back to the hotel in a black rage with himself
over what he termed his imbecility. As he remembered it, he had
made just one consecutive speech that afternoon.

"Joe," said he to Newmark, at the hotel office, "what's the plural
form of Incubus? I dimly remember it isn't 'busses.'"

"Incubi," answered Newmark.

"Thanks," said Orde gloomily.