‘Ah yes,’ she answered genially, ‘you have been there for a very long time, I know. I quite envy you. Such a wonderful little people, the Japanese--yes? And have you come to settle down at home again?’ ‘My home,’ answered the little old man, in accents that betrayed a certain loss of familiarity with the English language--‘my home is still out there.’ He waved his hand vaguely, indicating the East. ‘But I was brought over for some business. I had not meant to come here. My kinship with your husband has been broken by fifty years of time, and twelve thousand miles of space. Why should I think he could be anything but a stranger? But lately I have heard him calling. There is something that he wants, something that he wishes to know. I have heard him incessantly calling. And so I came. Perhaps I can give him an answer. Is he here, your husband?’ ‘Something that my husband wants, something that he has been asking for?’ repeated Gundred in a stupor. Kingston had no wishes that were not also hers. His whole life, she knew, was an open book to her. And, even if it had not been, how could this strange apparition have heard her husband’s voice? For one wild moment Gundred imagined her husband baying his ambitions to the moon, or ululating to the universe from the middle of Grosvenor Square. Otherwise how could his voice have penetrated to the ears of this mysterious old man? The visitor answered her unspoken thought. ‘A wish,’ he said, speaking slowly in his faint, sad tones--‘a wish has a life of its own. It has wings, and flies to all the four quarters of the air. It only needs the opened eye to see it in its flight, the opened ear to receive it. I have seen many strange things in the air. I am a very old man now. And I heard your husband’s longing, and I came to see if I could give him any help. I am on my way. I can only be here an hour or two. Your husband will soon be here again. I may wait for him?’ All Gundred’s inquiries could elicit no more definite information. The old man merely repeated his statement, and asked to be allowed to await Kingston’s return. Baffled, interested, acutely puzzled, Gundred must needs leave the riddle of his mission unsolved, and take refuge in the customary platitudes about the charm of Oriental life. And thus it happened that when Kingston returned at last, dusty and hot, from his expedition, he found his wife sitting amid the gilded disorder of the drawing-room, engaged in a difficult dialogue with a stranger.