I recovered myself with a start, drew my chair up in front of her and took both her hands firmly in mine. Whereupon my resolution nearly deserted me. How warm and soft, and altogether adorable they were. I drew a long breath and began:
“My dear—By the way, what is your name?”
“I”—regretfully, after a moment's thought—“I don't know, Hobart.”
“Quite so,” as though the fact was commonplace. “We will have to provide you with a name. Any suggestions?”
Charlotte hesitated only a second. “Let's call her Ariadne; it was Harry's mother's name.”
“That's so; fine! Do you like the name—Ariadne?”
“Yes,” both pleased and relieved. At the same time she looked oddly puzzled, and I could see her lips moving silently as she repeated the name to herself.
Not for an instant did I let go of those wonderful fingers. “What I want you to know, Ariadne, is that you have come into a world that is, perhaps, more or less like the one that you have just left. For all I know it is one and the same world, only, in some fashion not yet understood, you may have transported yourself to this place. Perhaps not.
“Now, we call this a room, a part of the house. Outside is a street. That street is one of hundreds in a vast city, which consists of a multitude of such houses together with other and vastly larger structures. And these structures all rest upon a solid material which we call the ground or earth.
“The fact that you understand our language indicates that either you have fallen heir to a body and a brain which are thoroughly in tune with ours, or else—and please understand that we know very little of this mystery—or else your own body has somehow become translated into a condition which answers the same purpose.