"Oh it's the great point--our common ground. I mean mine and his. We're both here--at the same age--for the first time, and but freshly disembarked. That is," said our young man, "we _were._" It pulled him up a little, but not, he was instantly eager to show, too much. "I'm not losing my way--it comes to the same thing." But he had had to consider it, and the Ambassador smoked. "If that then is the case with everything, what is--or what was the difference?" "Between us?"--Ralph was prompt. "Nothing but our age." "But I thought you said your age was the same." "Oh," Ralph explained, "I meant in the sense of our time, our period. That's the difference of the greater part of a century. It was then--that time ago--he came over." There would have been a failure of verisimilitude if his host hadn't visibly wondered. "And where has he been since?" Ralph looked an instant, from where he stood, through the window and out into the world of things less strange than those he might so well be felt to have filled the room with. But if he was grave he was not blank. "You see I don't know everything." And for a moment again he dropped. During this lapse the Ambassador on his side smoked; to the effect of his presently saying: "Is he ninety--nine years old?" It brought back his visitor. "No--for if he were I should be; and I'm exactly thirty, which does very well; for since I've become him, in particular, I call it young." Ralph hung fire--but really from the sense of now so interesting his auditor that keeping it up was almost a strain. Quite for himself, however, nothing was easier. "He's magnificent. He's really beautiful." That indeed made him catch himself, and this time he turned away. "What I mean is he _was!_ Before he ceased to be?" "He hadn't--or he hasn't," Ralph returned, "ceased to be; for if that were the case I myself shouldn't be here before you in the solid soundness I've undertaken to impress you with. He was in a perfect prime that it was a joy, as a fellow-countryman, to behold. It was in that form that he again, for an hour, existed to me." "For an hour?" the Ambassador asked as if to be exact. "It was probably less--even for all that passed between us; but the fact of my situation is that he did exist." "Is the fact of your situation that you've seen a ghost?" "Oh," Ralph raised his head high to say, "I decline to admit for a moment that he was _that._ He was much better than any ghost." It seemed to make for the Ambassador a distinction that he desired to grasp. "'Better'?" "Well, much more contrary to nature." "I don't understand then," the Ambassador said, "why you don't rather call it worse. Isn't the impression strange in proportion as it's contrary to nature, and isn't it by the same token agitating or upsetting or appalling, for any relation with such a matter, in proportion as it's strange?" After which he went on while Ralph felt his considering look: "Do you really _like_ such impressions?"