"I'm always coming across districts of that name," said Jay severely. "I often direct my enquiring fares to the region of God Knows Where. It is most unsatisfying. Where are we going?" "On for ever," said Mr. Russell. "Out of the world. To the House by the Sea." "Then will you please set me down at Baker's Arms?" said Jay. "Do you know, by the way, that Anonyma always says 'Stay' to a 'bus, if she remembers in time not to say 'Hi, stop,' like a common person." She was talking desperately against failure, but it seemed a doomed day, and nothing she could think of seemed worth saying. "I want to talk to you about your House by the Sea," said Mr. Russell. "You know I found it." "Don't tell me any facts," implored Jay. "Don't tell me you pressed half a crown into the palm of the oldest and wisest inhabitant, and found out facts about some nasty young man who was born in seventeen something, and lived in a place called Atlantic View, and wore curls and a choky stock, and fought at Waterloo, and lies in the village church under a stone monstrosity. Don't tell me facts, because I know they will bar me for ever out of my House by the Sea. Facts are contraband there." "There is no House by that Sea now," said Mr. Russell. "A slate quarry has devoured the headland on which it used to stand. Where the House used to be there is air now. I daresay the ghosts you knew still trace out the shape of the House in the air." "The ghosts I know," corrected Jay. "Don't put it in the past." "It's all in the past," said Mr. Russell. "It's all a dream, and an echo, and the ghost of the day before yesterday." "How do you know?" asked Jay. "How can you tell it's not 1916 that's the ghost?" She had been taught by her Friend to take very few things for granted, and time least of all. "I asked you to tell me no facts," she added. "I'll only tell you two," persisted Mr. Russell. "One is that they have in the church near the quarry a dark wooden figure of a saint, with the raised arm broken, and straight draperies. I saw it, and they told me what I knew already, that it came out of the hall of a house that was drowned in the sea. The other fact is a story that the tobacconist told me, about a wriggly ladder, and stone balls, and the Law. In the tobacconist's childhood they found the stone balls at the foot of the cliff in the sand. That story, too, I knew already. Quite apart from your letters, you little secret friend, I knew the face of that sea directly I saw it." "But how did you know? How dared you know?" "Oh well," said Mr. Russell, "you asked me to tell you no facts." Mr. Russell was not observant. He was not sufficiently alive to be observant. He was much occupied in remembering phantom yesterdays, and I do not think he listened very much to what the 'bus-conductor said. He only enjoyed the sound of her voice, which he remembered. So he did not know that she was unhappy.