Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/118

 we're at the opposite poles—or at least in quite different places."

It was wonderful more and more what the Ambassador could recognise by the aid of his kind wise little intervals of thought and indulgences of contemplation. "Yes, yes—but if I of course see that you, as the distinct individual you are so fortunately able to claim to be, stand here delightfully before me, that doesn't in the least tell me where he is located, as we say, in time and space."

"Why, he's down at the door in the cab," Ralph returned with splendid simplicity.

His host might have been lost for a moment in the sheer radiance of it—even to the point indeed of a gesture guarding against excess of impression or for that matter just gaining time. "Do you mean to say you're all this while keeping your hansom?"

"It's not a hansom—in this eternal rain: it's a four-wheeler with the glasses up. And he only wants," our young man explained, " to wait as long as I require. So at least I understand," he remarked as an afterthought.

"So that you'll find him—in his rather tried patience, it strikes me—when you go down? And I should have the pleasure of seeing him too," the Ambassador further ventured, "if I were to go down with you?"

This truly was the first of his Excellency's 104