And she reached out her capacious arms as if to enfold me—with the result that I felt ready to swoon again.
"You can't imagine how nervous I was about you last night, my dear, when you didn't come home!" continued Loa, in a fluent stream. "I was afraid you were lost! But father—father here wasn't worried. He was so absorbed in his researches into the antiquity of the hyphen, he only growled and said, what if you did get lost? The streets are as safe as our own home! But I didn't get a wink of sleep—not one wink!—until I read the news in the Screamer. Now, of course, I understand why you didn't come back!"
No defeated general, suddenly realizing that his most carefully laid strategy has failed, could have had a more bitter sinking sensation than overcame me at that moment. Evidently Loa and her father had not even guessed that I had run away!
"My dear boy," the Professor continued, still glancing disparagingly about the room, "what a miserable rat-hole they've given you to sleep in! You can't remain here! We'll arrange to take you back home immediately!"
"Yes, of course, we'll arrange immediately!" coincided Loa, beaming upon me with a devouring smile. "You poor dear! We'll give you better treatment! I'll take care of you myself!"
Overwhelmed at this idea, I opened my mouth to protest; but the words stuck in my throat and would not come. Instead, I uttered something halfway between a gasp and a sob.
"No, no, dear, don't exert yourself!" urged Loa. "Don't thank us yet! You're still too weak to speak! But we'll see the authorities—and have all the arrangements made."
The truth is that I was too weak to speak—much too weak! As Professor Tan Trum nodded good-bye and disappeared along the aisle, followed by his daughter, who smiled at me in the most infatuated way imaginable, I relapsed momentarily into a state of coma, from which I was a long while in recovering.
It is doubtful if I would have recuperated at all, in less than several "wakes," had it not been for a message that came to me an hour or two later, sealed in an envelope that shot to my bedside through a pneumatic tube. This was so unexpected, and so heartening, that it helped me more than all the hospital tonics, and even enabled me, for a time, to drive away the dread vision of Loa.