"It has a Midwestern base," he told her. Then, "But yours too is
strange, Deborah. You see, I come from a time almost two centuries
after yours. And as for my 'attire'--like you I was snatched from sleep
to come here. These are what is known as pajamas."
She came forward, fingered the material, said, "They are as fine as
silk--yet they are not silk."
"If I told you what they were made of you wouldn't believe me," he
said. "It is called nylon, Deborah."
"A strange term," she said thoughtfully. Then with a sudden flash of
blue eyes, "Methinks ye make free of my name for a man so young and so
recently acquainted."
"I'm not so young," he told her, "I'm forty-one. As for calling you by
your first name, if you object...."
"Nay, to what avail?" she countered, blushed again, added, "Surely ye
must be an agent of the devil himself, Master Charles--ye look no older
than twenty-five or six."
"In two hundred years we have learned to take rather better care of
ourselves," he added gently. "We don't age quite so fast."
"And ye'r women?" The question was blunt.
Justin said, "And our women too. Few of them show much age until they
are in their forties--some not even then."
"Methinks I would appreciate ye'r time--if indeed it _is_ ye'r time,"
she told him. "But come--ye must be hungry."
Her remark made Justin conscious of the headache that was plucking at
his temples. He said, "Come to think of it I'm starved."
"Then follow me, Master Charles," she said, moving toward the doorway.
There she paused, turned to study him again, added, "But surely ye
cannot be forty-one. Ye look such a _young_ man."
"I'll see what I can do," he replied. "Lead on, MacDuff."
He followed her down a long corridor, off which other cubicles opened,
similar to that in which he had so recently awakened. And he noted
that her walk was light and graceful, that her ridiculous tent of a
nightgown swayed as she moved to suggest her figure filled only a
fraction of it.