"Highly. You are the nearest approach to pre-historic man I have yet seen," said she, and thus was unjust to Jim.
"I am sorry----"
"Oh, there's no need to apologise. I daresay Circe found Ulysses very agreeable."
"Homer says so," answered Askew, who appeared to be well read; "but if I am Ulysses, you must be Circe."
"I accept the compliment!"
"Is it a compliment?" asked the pre-historic man, daringly.
"Unless meant for one it should not have been said."
"Beg pardon. I'm several kinds of ass. But I did mean it civilly, you know. Circe was a clever woman, whose magic turned men into outward semblances of their real characters."
Lady Jim smiled scornfully. "And if my magic could transform these," she glanced disparagingly round the place, "what a menagerie it would be! Pigs, and snakes, and parrots, and----"
"Dogs."