82. My first thought when I heard the Grass for the second time had broken its bounds, was that I had perhaps been a little hasty with Miss Francis. It was not at all likely she would succeed where so many better trained and better equipped scientists had so far failed, but I felt a vicarious sympathy with her, as being out of the picture when all her colleagues were striving with might and main to save the world; especially after the years she had spent on Mount Whitney. It would be an act of simple generosity on my part, I thought, to give her the wherewithal to entertain the illusion of importance. When all was said and done, she was a woman, and I could afford a chivalrous gesture even in the face of her overweening arrogance.
I am sorry to say she responded with complete illgrace. "I
