Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/60

 framed physiognomies these were things—and not unluckily either!—of a different order of reference, an order in which the friendly photograph for instance, whether of the late tenant of the place or of any other subject, played no part. The friendly photograph had been with us for half a century, but there was nothing there to Ralph's vision so new as that. Number Nine Mansfield Square affected that vision, in short, to a degree presently to be explained, as with an inimitable reserve in respect to the modern world. It had crossed the threshold of the century, the nineteenth, it had even measured a few steps of the portentous prospect, but where it had stopped, pulled up very short and as with its head in the air—it had stopped, one might have surmised, with a kind of disgust. It had determined clearly, on the apprehension then interchanged, to have as little to say to the future as an animated home, of whatever period, might get off with. "And yet I am the future," Ralph Pendrel mused, "and I dream of making it speak."

Face to face with it then, when he felt that already and quite distinctly it was speaking—which happened the first time that ever, key in hand, he was able to enter it unaccompanied—there was an inconsequence to note, and one from which he drew a fine pleasure. He was thus moved more shrewdly to reflect that if he was so trusted there must have been something in him 46