This truly was the first of his Excellency's questions to induce in our friend a pause at all ominous. "Surely--if he has _not_, under the strain of my absence, as you suggest, gone off on his own account." The Ambassador faced this contingency. "Where in that case will he have gone?" "Why, as I've explained, into the Future. Say," Ralph threw off, "into Regent Street or Piccadilly." And then as his companion, at this, frankly laughed out: "They didn't exist, you see, at that time in any such form as they have to-day." "I see, I see"--his Excellency again was prepared. "But fancy them," he clearly couldn't help at the same time exclaiming, "fancy _them_ the reward for him of so sublime a self-projection!" "Well," Ralph readily reasoned, "my idea is that, with all they represent for him, they're not unlikely to prove as great a reward as any this extravagance of my own may come in for." "It's wonderful for me," the Ambassador soon replied, "by which I mean it's quite out of my common routine, to allow myself--as you see I do!--such intimate strange participations. I understand you that I'm to regard myself as mixed in the concern of your friend down there no less than in your own." Ralph considered of that, but with all equanimity and to the upshot of his saying very naturally: "You want to be sure, properly enough, of what you may at the worst be let in for; you want to be guaranteed against undue inconvenience. Well, I don't think I see you let in for anything worse than having thus heard me out and taken my name and address." With which our young man smiled. "May they lie light on your conscience!" "They will lie there, I assure you, in a place quite of their own"--and the Ambassador took up the card brought in to him on his visitor's arrival and left close at hand. "This shall be carefully preserved, and I shall cherish, for the interest you inspire me with, the good hope of our some time meeting again."