"Never mind, dear," Julie said. "Are you all right?"
Marc considered the matter of his all-rightness. He let his enfeebled concentration travel the circuit of his body. There were no sharp pains or ominous numbnesses.
"I think so," he said. "I think I'm all right. I had a dream...."
"Here," Julie said, with a sigh of relief. "Let me help you up." On his feet, Marc tested the working parts of his rangey anatomy and found them all in an operative condition. He glanced around and for the first time since his awakening realized that he was still in the basement laboratory. In the dim moonlight that filtered through the hole in the wall, it was evident that the place had been ruined. The upper end, however, leading away into the wine bins had apparently been spared. The explosion rose and happened again in his memory.
"Well," he sighed, turning to Julie, "it turned out a real bust, didn't it?"
Julie gazed at him for a long moment and suffered a nasty transformation. Her eyes no longer reflected concern, solicitude or even slight affection. To the contrary, they expressed extreme annoyance. Evidently, now that she was certain he was all right, she was prepared to blame him for all the foul acts of man since the first dawn of time.
"Just what went on down here?" she inquired with tense hostility. "Do you realize, Marconi, that you nearly blew the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia right out the front door?"
Marc's thoughts turned to a picture of the Daughters of the Golden Gardenia being blown out his front door, and he experienced a sudden glow of inner warmth.
"And what were the old hens banded together on the same roost for this time?" he asked acidly. "Getting up funds to lay linoleum in the huts of African bushwhackers?"
Julie's blue eyes grew wide with surprise. That Marc had any feeling except awe for her club ladies had not occurred to her. "Marc Pillsworth!" she exclaimed. "The coffee urn upset on Mrs. Beemer and ruined her dress!"